Our friends over at Collider talked to Tony Scott this weekend about the Alien project that was announced last week, and they got a few more details from Scott, who's a producer on the project, about what is planned.
Most importantly, they confirmed that the film is a prequel rather than a remake, perhaps focusing on the crashed alien (note the small "a"; it belongs to a second alien species) ship on the planetoid and how it came to land there, or how the Aliens came to overrun the colony in Aliens.
Scott also confirmed that Rinsch is indeed directing, and that the film is expected to go before the cameras by the end of this year. Click the top link above for more.