PROMETHEUS Thread - PROMETHEUS 2 "Moving Ahead"

[AndyDursin]

Well this is definitely a surprise. Sounds more interesting now than a straight ALIEN reworking...I couldn't figure out why Ridley Scott wanted to be involved in a rehash of the series, but whatever this project is now, at least it sounds quite different...can't complain either if it's Noomi and Charlize either...

Ridley Scott Directing 'Prometheus' For Fox; Noomi Rapace Locked While Angelina Jolie And Charlize Theron Circling; Damon Lindelof Scripted With Scott From 'Alien' DNA

EXCLUSIVE: First, it started out as an Alien Prequel. But then it morphed into something "more original", an insider tells us -- even though Hollywood kept referring to the project as "The Alien Prequel" right up until today when Twentieth Century Fox officially announced the new Ridley Scott production as Prometheus is now bound for worldwide release on March 9th, 2012. Returning to science fiction filmmaking for the first time since Blade Runner, Scott will direct this epic. Of the five major roles to be cast, Noomi Rapace is the first actor signed to star (as "Elizabeth Shaw"), and we hear that Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron are both circling the other big female lead ("Vickers").

The initial draft of the script was written by Jon Spaihts (The Darkest Hour) from Ridley’s idea. Damon Lindelof (Lost, Star Trek) and Scott have since been working together on the current version which has expanded the story into new directions. We hear they were instructed to "go off and come up with what they want" using the 'Alien DNA'. Though story details are being closely guarded, Ridley explained the outlines of the film and its genesis as follows: “While Alien was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place. The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative. I couldn't be more pleased to have found the singular tale I'd been searching for, and finally return to this genre that's so close to my heart.”

Says Lindelof: "In a world flooded with prequels, sequels and reboots, I was incredibly struck by just how original Ridley's vision was for this movie. It's daring, visceral and hopefully, the last thing anyone expects. When I sat in a movie theater as a kid, feet raised off the floor for fear that something might grab my ankles, I never dreamed in my wildest imagination I would one day get to collaborate with the man responsible for it. Working alongside him has been nothing short of a dream come true."

The young Swedish actress landed the scientist's role after Scott saw her portrayal of fictional Lisbeth Salander in the film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as well as the rest of the Steig Larssen. All Fox would say is that the other roles "would be cast soon".


http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/ridley- ... male-lead/

[AndyDursin]

Going to be interesting to see what exactly this movie is...

[Eric W.]

If it's not another prequel it's good news in my book.

[mkaroly]

Just do SOMETHING already and stop talking about ideas! DO IT! Lol...

[Monterey Jack]

[John Johnson]

Director Ridley Scott recently said that his new movie Prometheus is using the original Alien as a "jumping-off point" for a "new, grand mythology." But apparently there are still aliens in the new movie?and they're big.
An exclusive source has told Sky Movies that the classic monsters from the original film are in fact in Prometheus, and are actually an important part of the plot: "Despite that press release that seemed to indicate there were no aliens in the movie, the familiar HR Giger-style aliens do appear. Big ones apparently."
Scott himself might have offered a clue to the aliens' involvement when he said that fans would "recognize strands of Alien's DNA" in the new film. According to the source, Scott might have meant that quite literally: "Part of the film will be shot in Morocco. I've heard that some sort of archaeological dig where they discover alien DNA takes place there and that DNA gives them the coordinates for an alien world. I've also heard Morocco is being used for alien planet landscapes so I'm not sure if it's an archaeological dig on another planet."
Whether that planet is the alien homeworld or not remains to be seen, but the source also revealed that another familiar element of the first Alien film will also reappear in this one: "They've built the 'space jockey' cockpit at Pinewood as seen in the original Alien film, so it definitely takes place in the same world as Alien."
The source also mentions that the film's main spaceship will be piloted by "an enormous head" that could be biomechanical in nature. All this comes on the heels of news that Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) is confirmed to be joining the cast?possibly as an android?while its release date has been moved from March 9th, 2012 to June 8th of that year? prime summer blockbuster real estate.
There have already been a ton of rumors around this project, so our advice is to treat this the same way.

http://www.isnnews.net/

[AndyDursin]

Charlize Theron has also been cast in the other main female part apparently.

I'm not surprised there is a connection -- and it sounds like there's more than a mere "tangential connection" as Scott said. To me, Fox worded their initial PR release in a very coy manner because this film is going to be set in the same universe but it's going to be a different type of film than ALIEN, so they tried to play down fan expectations by saying it's not an "Alien prequel".

It's still related to ALIEN, it's just not going to be an "ALIEN movie" like the other sequels IMO. Which is beyond fine -- I think after four movies and two AVP films, doing another formula film where the alien runs amok in a certain setting and kills everyone has been done to death already.

I'm excited now to see what Scott comes up with.

[Eric W.]

Sounds good.

[AndyDursin]

Michael Fassbender discusses the film in this interview from last week...

IMO this movie is still an ALIEN prequel or related to it...they're just using a smokescreen to make you think it doesn't have a connection.


‘Prometheus’: Michael Fassbender on Ridley Scott’s ‘breathtaking’ project
April 08, 2011 | 6:46 p.m.


Michael Fassbender is just three weeks into the filming of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” but the star says the experience is a dazzling one already.

“I walk on the set and I feel like I’m walking on a spaceship,” Fassbender said. “It’s breathtaking. All the various panels and screens and it’s just dealing with a top-notch art department and carpenters and the riggers and everything that goes into putting that together. It’s just, well, breathtaking, all of it.”

The June 2012 release, which also stars Charlize Theron, was originally conceived as a prequel to Scott’s 1979 classic “Alien” but veered off in other directions to become a stand-alone project (or, perhaps, is still a prequel and is simple being disguised to preserve some mystery). Fassbender wasn’t at liberty to say too much about the film but I asked him if the character he’s portraying has been especially elusive or if the contours are made clear by the script. “I feel I’ve got it at my fingertips, it’s there but challenging and, you know, I’m excited. I’ve got a few ideas that I’m running with and I think I’ve got a grasp on it but it’s always something that, organically, moving on its own course. I’m having a lot of fun with it. There’s a lot of interesting quirks and niches to him and I’m having a lot of fun exploring it.”

Even though it’s still in the early days on the set, Fassbender said interacting with Scott has been a career moment for him. “It’s great. He’s just so precise and fun and mischievous and just full of interesting and quirky ideas for the character. They come to you in passing but then he lets you run with it and there’s a lot of freedom there. I’m really just enjoying it and everything in general, the whole crew is so veteran and talented from all departments down, the camera, wardrobe, makeup, props, the works — you’ve got the cream of the crop and it’s an honor just to be allowed to be part of it.”

“Prometheus” will arrive 30 years to the month after Scott’s “Blade Runner” and, shockingly, it will be the director’s first sci-fi film since that classic starring Harrison Ford, Sean Young and Rutger Hauer. Fassbender, who will be in theaters in a big way this summer in the role of the young Magneto in Fox’s “X-Men: First Class,” said “Blade Runner” holds a special place in his heart as a film fan.

“It’s my favorite movie. I just love that movie. And really I love all the different versions, I just don’t care, I love that world and whatever you want to take from it you can take from it, nothing is fore-set in any way. I love that it’s a very feasible futuristic place, and again that quality that you’re in a thriller but you don’t know it. There’s always something at play and everyone has an agenda but none of it is really openly expressed.”

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/04/ ... g-project/

[AndyDursin]

Ridley Scott talks about the movie in a new interview here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/r ... omi-206321

Director Ridley Scott and stars Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace touched down at CineEurope Tuesday night to fire up enthusiasm among European exhibitors for their highly anticipated 3D sci-fi film Prometheus.

Scott and his two top cast members flew directly to CineEurope from the Prometheus set in Pinewood, London but did not bring any footage from the new, top secret project. They remained cagey during a Q&A session, only letting a few details of the film slip out. Scott acknowledged that Prometheus, while not a direct prequel to Alien, occupies the same general universe, saying the picture was inspired by a desire to explore the mystery of the "space jockey" the giant fossilized creature with the burst-open chest seen in the first Alien movie but never explained.

Scott also confirmed that the film's title is the name of a space ship sent from earth by an all-powerful corporation of the kind familiar to fans of the Alien franchise. The mythical reference - in Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man -- is deliberate.

"The (space) journey, metaphorically, is about a challenge to the gods," Scott said. But Scott's ambitions with Prometheus go far beyond simply restarting a hit franchise. The British director said the film's storyline, and script by David Lindelof, was partially inspired by the writings of legendary Swiss sci-fi writer Eric van Daniken.

Van Daniken, author of 1968 bestseller Chariot of the Gods, is best known as the first proponent of the so-called ancient astronaut theory, which holds that aliens kick-started civilization on earth. "NASA and the Vatican agree that is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way," Scott said. "That's what we're looking at (in the film), at some of Eric van Daniken's ideas of how did we humans come about."

Fassbender and Rapace were even cagier about revealing details of the Prometheus plot. Fassbender did hint his character, David, might be a version of the infamous corporate-designed android that plays a pivotal role in all Alien films.

SPOILERS

ALSO....an apparently "leaked plot outline" has shown up on a few sites. Take it for what it's worth, but it's interesting..I could see the movie having some of these elements. (Fox has apparently debunked this).

Earth. Year 2058.
Archaeological digs in Africa reveals alien artifacts that proves
humans were genetically engineered by a advanced alien race (space
jockeys). These "Alien Gods" also terraformed Earth in order to make
it habitable for their human creations.
Amongst the finds are coordinates to the Alien Gods' home-world.
To Paradise.
Months later the Weyland Corp launch the spaceship PROMETHEUS and his
crew, into deep space to make first contact. Thanks to faster than
light travel a few years later the PROMETHEUS enters the Zeta Riticuli
star system. Humans are greeted by their makers, then transported
further into space to a scary yet fascinating world.
The Alien Gods are proud of their "children", their first creation to
reach such levels of intelligence.
As a reward they share bits of their astonishing bio-based
technologies with the humans.
But for one member of the Prometheus' crew it's not enough.
In a treacherous act he steals the "bio-source code" to Terraforming,
A technology at the origin of all Gods' powers, that could make humans
equal to their creators.
The Alien Gods may be scientists but are also ruthless conquerors,
destroyers of worlds who will not accept humans as equals.
They unleash on the escaping human crew their favorite bio-weapon, a
creature used to "clean up" worlds before colonization. But something
goes wrong in the process and humans manage to turn the bio-weapon
against their makers. Giving birth to a smarter, nastier, bigger breed
of gut eating creatures. Creatures that will be the demise of
Paradise.
What's left of the Prometheus crew manages to escape the doomed alien planet.
On their trail a survivor Alien God on a familiar ship with an
ultimate mission.
Bring the wrath of the Gods to Earth.

[AndyDursin]

Damon Lindelof also on record now saying this movie is indeed ALIEN related -- seems to me they just want to distance themselves from the ALIEN 3, ALIEN RESURRECTION and ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movies....can't blame them there.

Here's an interview from last week:

It started as an Alien prequel as that's what everybody wanted it to be. Obviously Ridley Scott hasn't made a science fiction movie in 25 years since Blade Runner, so the idea that he's returning to this genre is huge.

But there's a real issue which is what is the state of the Alien franchise at this point in our lives? Now it's Alien versus Predator and all these things and it's been completely and totally diluted.

I've always felt really good prequels should be original movies. And the sequel to those prequels should not be the movie that already exists. Because, all due respect to anybody who makes a prequel, why would you ruin the greatest twist in the history of movie cinema?
'Luke I am your father'... By showing me three movies (Star Wars prequels) that basically spoil that surprise. You could do movies that take place before Star Wars, but I don't need to see the story of the Skywalker clan. Show me something else that I can't guess the possible outcome of. There's no suspense and inevitability.

So a true prequel should essentially precede the incidents of the original film, but be about something entirely different, feature different characters, have an entirely different theme although it takes place in that same world.
That was my fundamental feeling about what this movie wanted to be.

And truth be told, it wasn't script doctoring in the strictest sense because the draft that existed before I came on was written by this guy named Jon Spaihts, who is very good! And there are a lot of things in Prometheus that were hatched by Jon Spaihts and that were written by Jon Spaihts.
And I feel like somewhere in the media reconstruction of this story the tale is I come in and pitch an entirely new movie and it's so original that everything else gets thrown out and THAT's what we're doing.
In my brain that's not exactly what happened.

But I also do feel that this is the movie that I would want to see as a fanboy take place in that Alien universe that precedes the events of the original Alien, but is not necessarily burdened by tropes of that franchise with facehuggers and chestbursters and all that stuff that I love. But we've seen it before, so can I do something different this time.
And that's the movie that Ridley wanted to make.

[Eric W.]

Damon Lindelof also on record now saying this movie is indeed ALIEN related -- seems to me they just want to distance themselves from the ALIEN 3, ALIEN RESURRECTION and ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movies....can't blame them there.

Smart move.

[AndyDursin]

First image released and some info from Deadlinehollywood off the Comic Con panel...even if it's PG-13 a naked Charlize? yes please

http://www.deadline.com/2011/07/2011-co ... s-unwound/

The moderator for this panel will be LOST's Damon Lindelof, who welcomes us to the “20th Century Fox bar mitzvah.” Thanks us for not going to the GAME OF THRONES panel, noting that a real knight will be making an appearance here (Sir Ridley Scott, as it turns out). Lindelof remembers one day he was driving his car and got a call saying Ridley Scott was gonna call him in 5 minutes. After he crashed the car, he says, he got the call, and it was Ridley asking if he could send Damon a script. He did, and they ended up working together on what would become PROMETHEUS. Do we want to see something? You bet.

Clip starts...but it's just a Ridley Scott sizzle reel from previous movies? Even ROBIN HOOD? Not for long, thankfully. We see Ridley on a new set, then images of a spaceship control room full of lit panels. A giant room that looks like the Giger-designed spaceship in the first ALIEN where they find the eggs, though it's filled with things that look more like Egyptian coptic jars – though they may still be eggs. It does seem like something bio-mechanical is inside.

We see Michael Fassbender examining them. Green-glass sleep pods. Bubble-helmets – the aesthetic is an odd mix of the original ALIEN H. R. Giger designs and pulp comic-book Buck Rogers-type stuff. Charlize Theron is doing push-ups naked. There's a large, ringed planet.

Scott is back on, says the cast of characters “find an establishment that is not what they expected it to be.” Somebody collapses, looks like internal injuries. People in space suits freak out. More of the Giant egg cargo hold. Scott says “It is all about everything...it has the DNA of the original ALIEN...what I wanna do is scare the living **** out of you.” It's being shot in digital 3-D.

Frankly, I'm glad they're continuing the franchise as such in a creative way. It's been a while since the original aliens were scary.

Clip ends. Charlize Theron comes out, with much longer hair than usual. “For all actors there is the one, the mighty, and that for me is Ridley Scott.” Scott wanted her, and she couldn't do it because of MAD MAX. When that got postponed, he called her back immediately – she felt “the script wasn't yet at its full potential.” With Lindelof and Scott, she helped work on it until it was (seriously? Charlize Theron is telling Lindelof and Scott what to write? Must admit, after watching GLADIATOR I wanted to do the same thing).

Lindelof makes a joke about the naked push-ups being disgusting and exploitative. Theron: “I know how to sell a movie.” Describes her character as “a suit: she's the machine that runs the machine...She's not a scientist, not a believer. You can tell she's gonna be a problem...You think you know who she is,[then] in the third act you strip her from her skin and really see what her bones are about.” (I assume that's figurative, but this is an ALIEN-like movie, so...)

Surprise – Ridley Scott's on the big screen via satellite from Iceland! And beside him is Noomi Rapace, cast after Scott became obsessed with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. She looks much nicer out of that character.

Ridley: “I feel like I'm about to produce a wildlife program.” His last day of shooting will complete the beginning of the film.

Why do this movie? “There was something in the first ALIEN no-one ever had a question about, and that became the center of it.” Says the sequels never dealt with it either, and he was amazed. Though he doesn't say it, the assumption is that he's talking about the “Space Jockey” creature in the first flick, the elephantine skeleton with the exploded stomach that was clearly a prior victim of the Alien.

Sets are mostly practical, little CG. He loves 3D, says “I'll never work without 3D again, even with small dialogue scenes.” As for the CG, “Doug Trumbull once said to me, if you can do it live, do it live...it is not less expensive to do digital.”

Lindelof: “Are you a replicant, and if not, why did you keep leaving origami on my chair?”

Scott: “I thought you were a f**king robot, and you needed origami to get your heart started!” Hints there might be two robots in PROMETHEUS.

Regarding rumored PG-13 rating, Scott says “I've got a responsibility to my studio, but I always want to have it both ways.” He'll make the final decision with Tom Rothman when they screen the final film. Confirms the naked push-ups are in there.

[Monterey Jack]

Could you please reduce that image, Andy? The thread is totally stretched out by it.

[Eric W.]

I'm getting a good feeling here.