There was a point, somewhere before The Phantom Menace when George Lucas decided that Star Wars was his "destiny" after all. Ridley Scott is clearly having some sort of similar epiphany, since following Prometheus and in the run-up to Alien: Covenant:, he's now revealed that he has two further Alien films planned before his prequel series finally links to his 1979 classic{
"When [Covenant] finishes there’ll be another one and then another one," he says, speaking at a Sydney press conference as he begins pre-production. "They'll gradually drive into the back entrance of the 1979 film.”
None of these projected projects, incidentally, is the Neill Blomkamp film, which is seeming an increasingly unlikely prospect as Sir Ridders re-asserts his ownership of the franchise and takes it in the direction that personally interests him.
"Prometheus was borne out of my frustration that in the three _Alien_s that followed [mine], no-one asked the question 'Who made the Alien and why?'", he explains, reiterating something he's been saying for ages. "Very basic questions. I came up with the notion of Prometheus, which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from. So I’m now going to the next one, which is the next evolution directly connected with the first one. We’ll kind of pick it up there, with Michael Fassbender in pieces, and it will evolve..."
Fassbender is set to return in some form as the android David, but Scott says Noomi Rapace will only make a brief appearance in Covenant. He says the rest of the cast will likely be largely Australian, given the Sydney shoot. The movie's locations will include "monumental forest and monumental rock." He says all three of his Prometheus follow-ups will shoot in Australia, but he revealed that Dennis Villeneuve's Blade Runner sequel - which Scott is producing - will be made in the same studio as The Martian in Budapest.
Alien: Covenant will go into full production in March for a likely release in 2017. "Why was this space jockey there and why did he have an Alien inside him? Those questions will be answered," says Scott. At the current pace they'll be answered in 2027.