Every­thing we know about Alien: Covenant

Next year is shap­ing up to be a busy one for Rid­ley Scott, with Blade Run­ner 2049 and Alien: Covenant among the most hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed releas­es of 2017. While Denis Vil­leneuve is steer­ing the long-await­ed sequel to Scott’s clas­sic dystopi­an sci-fi from 1982, Scott him­self has opt­ed to direct the sixth instal­ment of the Alien fran­chise – the first offi­cial trail­er for which you can watch here. The film takes place 10 years after the events of 2012’s Prometheus but still before the gut-bust­ing hap­pen­ings of his 1979 original.

Orig­i­nal­ly titled ​‘Alien: Par­adise Lost’, it will be inter­est­ing to see whether Scott fur­ther expands the cre­ation back­sto­ry, giv­en the title’s con­no­ta­tions with the ​“gods” that birthed human­i­ty. The change of name could hint at a change of direc­tion, although it seems unlike­ly that the film’s basic plot and themes will have changed all that much from when Scott first con­ceived the idea after watch­ing 1992’s Alien 3, which he famous­ly despised.

Per­haps this is his way of rewrit­ing the wrongs of that third instal­ment while address­ing some of the lin­ger­ing ques­tions still being asked by fans almost five years on from Prometheus, specif­i­cal­ly regard­ing the true motives of the engi­neers and what­ev­er the hell is up with all that black goo.

Michael Green and Jack Paglen are behind the screen­play for Alien: Con­venant and each has expressed a desire to make it more hor­ror-ori­en­tat­ed than the first film, although it’s worth not­ing that Spec­tre and Ran­go scribe John Logan has been draft­ed in to re-write the script. The sto­ry sees the colony ship Covenant touch down in an unchart­ed par­adise, which is of course not what it seems. It’s here that the crew runs into the only inhab­i­tant, the sole syn­thet­ic sur­vivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

After months of spec­u­la­tion it was con­firmed that Noo­mi Rapace would be repris­ing her role along­side Michael Fass­ben­der as David, who is joined by anoth­er arti­fi­cial being named Wal­ter, also played by Fass­ben­der who describes him as ​“a real dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish”. Guy Pearce is also back as the bil­lion­aire Peter Wey­land, while some intrigu­ing recent devel­op­ments have seen James Fran­co announced as the mys­te­ri­ous Bran­son and, even more excit­ing­ly, Inher­ent Vice and Steve Jobs star Kather­ine Water­son con­firmed in the role of Daniels. There’s also sup­port­ing slots for Dan­ny McBride and Bil­ly Crudup.

A recent­ly revealed first-look image shows Water­son wield­ing a huge gun in a strange envi­ron­ment, seem­ing­ly on the look out for aliens. Oth­er glimpses of the pro­duc­tion have been few and far between, but we now have a suit­ably chill­ing poster and a close-up of the Covenant uni­form patch, which is sure to fea­ture heav­i­ly in the film. Sev­er­al cryp­tic tweets have been deci­phered by avid fans, sug­gest­ing that a trail­er is immi­nent, although we’re ful­ly expect­ing Scott to keep most of his cards close to his chest between now and the film’s release on 19 May.