Ever since Ridley Scott announced his intention to film a prequel to the Alien series, which has in recent years been driven into the ground by the diabolical Alien vs Predator spin-offs, fan speculation has been stuck in overdrive. Story details are still thin on the ground, aside from snippets given out by the director to various sources, which you can find on the film’s Wikipedia page, dating the film in 2085 and featuring a female lead character (not Ripley – Flixist’s favourite punk Swede Noomi Rapace reportedly being front-runner for the presently unnamed role), the non-merged Weyland Industries and the possibility of the Xenomorph creature being a manufactured weapon designed as a means of ‘cleaning up’ planets. We also now know, according to the Vulture blog, that the film will be called Paradise.
Details on characters and casting follow the jump.
Ever since Ridley Scott announced his intention to film a prequel to the Alien series, which has in recent years been driven into the ground by the diabolical Alien vs Predator spin-offs, fan speculation has been stuck in overdrive. Story details are still thin on the ground, aside from snippets given out by the director to various sources, which you can find on the film's Wikipedia page, dating the film in 2085 and featuring a female lead character (not Ripley – Flixist's favourite punk Swede Noomi Rapace reportedly being front-runner for the presently unnamed role), the non-merged Weyland Industries and the possibility of the Xenomorph creature being a manufactured weapon designed as a means of 'cleaning up' planets. We also now know, according to the Vulture blog, that the film will be called Paradise.
Details on characters and casting follow the jump.{{page_break}}
This would certainly seem to tie into Scott's earlier comments about terraforming being a key proponent of the plot, reinforced by information supposedly gleaned from a script leak back in October.
Vulture also has some info about the make-up of the cast, reportedly comprising the aforementioned female lead, an android called David who is an earlier version of the Bishop model from Scott's original Alien film (with producers looking at Michael Fassbender for the part, until a pay dispute got in the way) and an older woman, whom the always-excellent Michelle Yeoh is being sought to play. The motley crew of this latest – or, I suppose, the first – doomed interplanetary excursion will also include a businessman along for the ride who will almost certainly be a cynical sod and die first, plus the mysterious 'Engineer One', an entirely CGI character to be played in Gollum fashion by a 6'5 actor (wild speculation – Dolph Lundgren? Surely not Vince Vaughan…).
Vulture are not – excuse the pun – alien to sniffing out details on the film. Back in October, they were first on the mark to report the reasons for Fox's reported enthusiasm for taking on the project, which include a lower than expected budget projection and a potentially controversial PG-13 rating. Although no release date has been revealed yet, comments on Twitter from the film's visual effects designer Henry South (whose account was swiftly suspended as a result) would suggest that the tail end of 2011 could be a solid bet.
