There's something ALIEN-related in the works at 20th Century Fox, and nobody is saying exactly what it is.
I'm guessing that it's not a movie. Neill Blomkamp's ALIEN 5 is dead in the water, and last month Birth.Movies.Death. reported that, contrary to some rumors, screenwriter John Logan has never completed a script for the ALIEN movie that Ridley Scott intended to bridge the gap between the prequel ALIEN: COVENANT and the original ALIEN film – a movie that would have taken us back to LV-426 as Engineers go after the murderous android David.
Recently, the Alien Anthology Instagram account promised that the ALIEN franchise will be expanding in 2019 – an appropriate year for an expansion, since it marks the 40th anniversary of the original film. Along with that, they offered a tease of the expansion in the form of a "6-part dossier exposing the secret history of Weyland-Yutani", posting six images accompanied by captions that tell the story of Weyland-Yutani conducting horrific experiments with xenomorphs… It's interesting, but what is it promoting?
There are several projects this dossier could be building up to. Earlier this year, Fox announced that six filmmakers had been selected to create short films set in the ALIEN universe. There was a rumor that an ALIEN series may be in development at an unnamed streaming service, but that has never been substantiated. Fox has trademarked the title ALIEN: BLACKOUT for a video game. Next month, Dark Horse Comics will begin publishing a new series titled ALIEN: RESISTANCE, which will feature Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the film series' heroine Ellen Ripley and the lead character in the 2014 video game ALIEN: ISOLATION.
Whatever the Alien Anthology Instagram account is starting to hype up, it seems to have something to do with the Amanda Ripley character, because her name is hashtagged on some of the dossier posts.
For now, we can only continue to wonder exactly what this dossier stuff is all about. We'll let you know when Fox makes an announcement.
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