Ridley Scott Returns to Alien: A Prequel Trilogy Closer With Michael Fassbender and No Xenomorphs
Ridley Scott is going back to the Alien franchise, and this time he is finishing what he started. Speaking to the French outlet AlloCiné, the 88-year-old director revealed he is rewriting a new Alien film that will serve as the conclusion to his prequel trilogy — the arc that began with Prometheus (2012) and continued with Alien: Covenant (2017) (Deadline, 28 August 2026).
Michael Fassbender is back. His character — the synthetic android Walter One, last seen in Covenant — will return, and Scott says the story picks up directly where that film left off. Scott told AlloCiné the character now "thinks he's Ozymandius," a nod to Shelley's poem about a fallen king whose empire has turned to dust (Deadline, 28 August 2026; The Hollywood Reporter, 26 August 2026).
The most striking detail: Scott confirmed the next film will not feature the alien creatures that give the franchise its name. He first said so in 2017, and the current reporting indicates that plan holds (Dread Central, 8 December 2017). Instead, the director wants to train the story on artificial intelligence. Scott told AlloCiné that AI has "gone off the rails" and "could switch every digital thing off in the world," framing it as an existential threat more immediate than any xenomorph (Deadline, 28 August 2026).
The decision to re-engage with the franchise reportedly followed Scott's assessment of Alien: Romulus, the 2024 entry directed by Fede Álvarez. Scott called the film "OK" but said it "needs some help," which prompted him to step back in (Deadline, 28 August 2026). Romulus grossed roughly $351 million worldwide against a reported $80 million production budget — a solid commercial performer, though clearly not enough to keep Scott away from his own creation.
Scott's return also comes on the heels of FX renewing Noah Hawley's television series Alien: Earth for a second season, keeping the property across both film and television (Deadline, 28 August 2026). The franchise is owned by Disney following its 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, which inherited the rights to the series Scott launched with the original Alien in 1979.
For fans of the prequel films, this is the first concrete signal that the thread left dangling nearly a decade ago — Fassbender's android drifting through space with a cargo of colonist embryos and a god complex — will finally be picked up. No production start date, release window, or full cast has been announced. The project is in development with Scott actively rewriting the script.
