Neill Blomkamp's ALIEN 5 started off as a fanboy dream project being developed by the filmmaker in his free time, without the knowledge of ALIEN franchise owners Twentieth Century Fox. Once Fox found out about it, however, the sequel seemed to be on the fast track to reality, with Sigourney Weaver set to reprise the role of series heroine Ripley and Michael Biehn expected to return as his ALIENS character Hicks, despite the fact that Hicks was killed off at the start of ALIEN 3.
ALIEN 5 was delayed indefinitely when Ridley Scott's ALIEN prequel / PROMETHEUS sequel ALIEN: COVENANT started to take off. Many fans took the delay to be a death blow to Blomkamp's film, especially since the director signed on to helm a separate Fox project, THE GONE WORLD, soon after.
One person who hasn't given up on ALIEN 5 is Weaver. During a recent appearance at a VMware event, Weaver was asked if the movie would be happening and replied:
Well, I *think* it is. Ridley asked Neill NOT to make our Alien til after Prometheus 2. He (Ridley) wanted his movie to shoot and be released first. But it’s an AMAZING script, and Neill and I are REALLY excited about doing it. We’re doing other things until we can get going on that. I’d be really surprised if we DIDN’T do it, because it’s such a great script, and we love working together. So, it’s just going to take a little bit longer to get out to you, but it’ll be worth the wait."
I really hope it will happen, and sooner than later, because I was much more interested in the idea of a Blomkamp ALIEN film than I am in a sequel to PROMETHEUS.