By Prometheus is at the top of many people’s most anticipated movies of a very busy summer, and a big part of that is the prospect of Sir Ridley Scott returning to the Alien universe and bringing back the horror credibility lost after such indiginities as the Alien vs Predator movies. Sir Ridley said at last year’s Comic Con that he was creating edits for both the R and PG-13 ratings, and has now clarified to EMPIRE that he believes an R-rating would be the most natural fit for the material, even though a PG-13 makes more financial sense.
Whilst a PG-13 rating does open up the prospective audience, I think fans will be far more excited to see the movie in its unadulterated form and spread the good word, whereas the debacle over The Expendables 2‘s initially softened rating shows how quickly bad word of mouth can spread when fan expectations are undermined. Prometheus is so keenly anticipated than an R-rating probably won’t do much harm to its likelihood of success, and losing that credibility could do a lot of damage to the prospect of resurrecting the Alien franchise. Let’s hope the studio goes with Sir Ridley’s instincts on this.
[via EMPIRE]