ALIEN Prequel - Fox Loves Lindelof's Script

[AndyDursin]

I wouldn't greenlight another ALIEN movie with a $250 million budget either. Has Ridley left the reservation?

What he will have a hard time with is that NONE of the movies in this series have grossed that amount of money. ALIENS was a hit, but not a mega-blockbuster; really ALIEN was as well.

Go past that and ALIEN 3 and RESURRECTION both grossed in the $60's domestic; ALIEN VS PREDATOR 1 was a hit, but REQUIEM wasn't. And neither of the latter managed to hit $200 million worldwide.

So a $250 million budget for ALIEN - The Prequel, Ridley Scott or not, doesn't seem to make financial sense.

The rating is another matter. I understand the need to make it an R. But really the original ALIEN wasn't that graphic -- could it get to a PG-13 today? Probably not, but close. And if I were Fox, if Ridley Scott was spending $200 million plus, I would want a PG-13 too. AVP 1 made a lot more money than AVP 2 in this country.

I still say the budget is the big deal at hand here. Either he finds a way to drop it down or you can forget it.

http://movies.sky.com/alien-prequel-sta ... fights-fox

[Eric W.]

Another movie that I really don't care if it ever gets made. Don't need any more prequels.

[AndyDursin]

Looks to me like those "problem" reports aren't true. Especially if they are high on Noomi Rapace for the female lead...

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/next-ho ... n-prequel/

Now that Rooney Mara got the Lisbeth Salander role in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Emma Stone got the Gwen Stacy role in Spider-Man and Sandra Bullock is in talks for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, the next juicy female role is the lead in the Ridley Scott-directed 3D Alien prequel at 20th Century Fox. I'm told that the studio and Scott have had general meetings with a number of actresses. I've heard that list includes the studio's Wall Street 2 star Carey Mulligan and Abbie Cornish (Scott directed her in A Good Year), but another intriguing possibility I've heard more than once today is that Noomi Rapace also met and left a strong impression. The actress, who played Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish adaptation, met Scott and Fox before she signed on to star with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law in the Sherlock Holmes sequel. I'm told that meetings are ongoing with cast and no decisions have been made, but I could see Rapace taking a Ripley-esque turn in space. Below is a recent trailer for her final turn in the Salander role, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

[AndyDursin]

Looks Fox likes Lindelof's script -- it also would cut the budget down to about $160 mil and likely be PG-13, but I agree if ALIEN was made today it could get a PG-13 minus the f-bombs.

Besides, look what all the blood and guts did for ALIEN VS PREDATOR REQUIEM, which was a "hard R" and absolutely sucked.

Vulture just got word: Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof turned in his new draft of the screenplay for Ridley Scott's Alien prequel on Saturday, and 20th Century Fox execs are very pleased with it indeed! We’re told all involved parties have been made to sign nondisclosure agreements about the plot, but our spies have been able to glean several interesting nuggets about the project, which is set roughly 35 years before Scott’s dystopic classic. Here's what we know ...

One reason Fox execs are so thrilled with Lindelof’s Alien draft is that, not only is it creatively engaging, but it adds no expensive "set pieces" — production-speak for elaborate, effects-heavy action sequences that add millions to the cost of a film — to the movie. 20th Century Fox and Scott have been wrangling over the director’s proposed budget. One insider familiar with the situation puts Scott’s suggested budget at between $150 million and $160 million; Fox obviously, would like that number to shrink. Still, this is some good news for Fox, which has almost nothing resembling a blockbuster in the hopper for the summer of 2012, and could certainly stand to reinvigorate a wildly popular multi-part sci-fi franchise.

A parade of actresses have met with Scott (who's being represented in these negotiations by his longtime WME agent George Freeman) to discuss the lead role — that of a female Colonial Marine general — but only two have engendered substantial enthusiasm from both Fox brass and Scott Free, the director’s Fox-based production company: Vulture can report exclusively that at the top of the list is Natalie Portman. (She recently detached herself from the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at Lionsgate Films out of concern that she was now too old to play the part of Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet. Portman turns 30 next June; Bennet is only 20 in both Austen and Grahame-Smith’s versions of Pride.) Right behind Portman is the already-reported Noomi Rapace, star of the Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Don’t take Scott’s recent interview with The Independent — in which he claims that the Alien prequel would be “really tough, really nasty” — to mean this is automatically going to be an R picture: We’re told another reason Fox execs are pleased with Lindelof’s re-write of original screenwriter Jon Spaihts’ script is that it's still aimed at a more accessible PG-13 rating. "The thinking," explains one insider, "is that if the original Alien were released today, minus the F-bombs, you could still get a PG-13. Alien is a very Jaws-ian movie: There’s no sex, and while there’s lots of violence, most of it is off-camera. Maybe you’d have to cut away from certain scenes two seconds earlier, but it could be done."

The prequel still lacks a proper name. Untitled Alien Prequel hardly comes trippingly off the tongue, but while several titles are being bandied about, none have unanimous support of Fox and Scott.

It’s not in any way a reboot of Alien or the Aliens franchise; it’s really meant to be viewed as Scott’s second Alien movie. What's more, no Predator creatures appear anywhere within the film. Despite Fox’s efforts to mate the two sci-fi icons (sci-ficons?), Scott’s camp sees the two franchises as hailing from distinct genres that will not co-mingle, synergy be damned. “The later Aliens movies were action movies, but the original Alien was a horror-suspense film," explains one spy, "This returns the franchise to its roots."

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 ... elofs.html

[mkaroly]

Personally I think it would be a really good move for them to go back to what Scott described as the more "horror-suspense" route of ALIEN. With torture violence and gratuitous gore abounding in a lot of horror films nowadays, showing less and making it more scary would be a good thing.

[AndyDursin]

Personally I think it would be a really good move for them to go back to what Scott described as the more "horror-suspense" route of ALIEN. With torture violence and gratuitous gore abounding in a lot of horror films nowadays, showing less and making it more scary would be a good thing.

I think it can be done too Michael. This whole argument you often read from "fanboys" that such-and-such "has to be R" is often overblown. Like they said, ALIEN really isn't a "hard R," and the ratings standards we see today would nearly allow a PG-13 for that film at this point.

[Monterey Jack]

Personally I think it would be a really good move for them to go back to what Scott described as the more "horror-suspense" route of ALIEN. With torture violence and gratuitous gore abounding in a lot of horror films nowadays, showing less and making it more scary would be a good thing.

I think it can be done too Michael. This whole argument you often read from "fanboys" that such-and-such "has to be R" is often overblown. Like they said, ALIEN really isn't a "hard R," and the ratings standards we see today would nearly allow a PG-13 for that film at this point.

I remember when the (awful) remake of The Fog came out a few years back and geeks were bemoaning its PG-13 rating, and I'm wondering if they had really seen the original recently. You could submit the exact same version to the MPAA today, and it'd easilly earn a PG-13. No major gore, very little profanity (certainly no F-Bombs), no sex (just post-coital spooning between Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Atkins)...I realize there was no PG-13 back in 1980, but Jaws was far more violent five years earlier, and got a PG rating. Ditto the original Halloween. I think only the sex scene really warranted the R, and even that was pretty tame. In fact, except for The Thing, it's hard to think of any of John Carpeneter's early films that warranted their arbitrary R ratings.

[AndyDursin]

I remember when the (awful) remake of The Fog came out a few years back and geeks were bemoaning its PG-13 rating, and I'm wondering if they had really seen the original recently. You could submit the exact same version to the MPAA today, and it'd easilly earn a PG-13. No major gore, very little profanity (certainly no F-Bombs), no sex (just post-coital spooning between Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Atkins)...I realize there was no PG-13 back in 1980, but Jaws was far more violent five years earlier, and got a PG rating. Ditto the original Halloween. I think only the sex scene really warranted the R, and even that was pretty tame. In fact, except for The Thing, it's hard to think of any of John Carpeneter's early films that warranted their arbitrary R ratings.

All good points. Back before PG-13 you always had these PG movies with the MAY BE TOO INTENSE FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN designation on there. JAWS, TEMPLE OF DOOM definitely had it -- I think RETURN OF THE JEDI might have had it too (don't recall specifically there).

That was always the great irony of HALLOWEEN II, that Carpenter went back in on that movie (as a producer) and added all this gore after the first cut of the movie was turned in. It was completely contrary to how the first film worked, it's mostly the power of suggestion as opposed to being visceral.