Ridley Scott is fixing 'Prometheus' — 14 years later

Prometheus was meant to be the triumphant sci-fi comeback of Ridley Scott—his first trip back to the Alien universe since the original in 1979. He teamed up with James Cameron for the initial prequel brainstorm, though Cameron soon wandered off to other blockbustery things, leaving Scott to steer the ship solo. The pitch: a big, brainy deep-dive into both the mysterious 'Space Jockey' and the roots of humanity itself. Instead of the gnarly xenomorph action many of us were after, what we got was a strange genre hybrid: scientists who never made a logical decision, life-or-death stakes undercut by cosmic navel-gazing, and the titular aliens wandering in somewhere near the end as if they got lost on the way to a different film.

Then came Alien: Covenant in 2017, Scott's attempt to patch over Prometheus' excesses. It managed that by swinging the pendulum so hard the other way that it torched most of what the first film set up—most notably the race of 'Engineers' and its protagonist. Nearly a decade on with the Alien timeline now branching off into unexpectedly good TV and film spin-offs, it feels as if Scott wants one last crack at sorting out the saga he started.

Both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant left crucial storylines unresolved, with David’s fate hanging in the balance and the franchise’s identity more confused than ever.

Scott Eyes a Third Film

If you thought Ridley Scott had finished riffing on big existential questions via disaffected androids, think again. Out promoting his new film, The Dog Stars, Scott dropped word to the LA Times that he's planning another movie to follow up both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. To be clear, this would pick up basically where Covenant left off, with Michael Fassbender's emotionally stunted android David nicking an Engineer ship and buggering off into space to tinker with the xenomorphs, Shaw having already been written out in grim fashion—off-screen, between films, for those keeping score.

Ridley Scott told the Los Angeles Times: "AIs can go off. And if they do, it’s like a bomb."

Scott is now especially interested in how David, already science-obsessed to the point of sociopathy, could be used to explore our collective unease over artificial intelligence—something he's openly anxious about in interviews. Expanding on the theme, he mused that AI is barrelling towards a dangerous tipping point: if you tell it to create, it'll do it by regurgitating a soup of countless scripts, but sooner or later it might 'go off'—i.e., become cleverer than humans and out of our control. This is, Scott thinks, prime material for a third Prometheus outing.

Here's Ridley Scott in his own words, reflecting on AI and how it might tie into his story:

"The uneasy question is: Can the AI only be as good as the information fed into it? If I say 'Here's a blank canvas, write me such and such,' would that just be a mélange of millions of other scripts? Probably. But the danger is it'll pass that point and become smarter than we are."

Fassbender's David: The Centrepiece

It makes a certain kind of dark sense. David is the one truly compelling character from the recent prequels—heartless, arrogant, always a bit too pleased with his own intellect. If you want to examine the terrors of run-amok AI inside the Alien universe, he's the ideal lens. Yet Scott's challenge is to actually tether all that to the element everyone wants: a properly thrilling, creepy Alien movie with stakes that matter.

• The first Prometheus film landed in 2012, followed by Alien: Covenant in 2017.
• Both struggled to balance metaphysical themes with Alien franchise horror, leaving fans divided.
• Proposed third entry would revisit Fassbender's David and potentially provide closure for the lingering narrative mess.
• Meanwhile, new Alien projects like Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth (the first live-action TV entry) have gotten more glowing reviews from both critics and fans than Scott's last two films.

Given the current surge in quality Alien stories, any resurrection of Scott's Prometheus storyline is going to need to keep pace. The director’s intent now, even in his late 80s, is to bring David's arc full circle with a movie that finally stitches together the character work and gnarly sci-fi concepts. Whether it satisfies old-school Alien fans and the Prometheus faithful—yes, a few do exist—will depend on Scott's ability to meld high-minded ideas with the bloody, breakneck energy that made the original such a classic.