Ridley Scott Talks Prometheus 2 And Blade Runner 2: Don’t Expect Xenomorphs
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Ridley Scott is a busy man. His biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings opens this December, he’s getting ready to film The Martian—putting together one hell of a cast in the process—and the wheels are always turning when it comes to revisiting two of his bigger sci-fi films, Blade Runner and Prometheus. The director recently took a few minutes to address the status of both Blade Runner 2 and Prometheus 2, which is something we always appreciate.
Talking to Yahoo about Exodus, there was also a great deal of time dedicated to these two projects, and we have to admit, we’re way more interested in either one of these than seeing another Moses movie. According to the director, Prometheus 2 is well under way. He says, “Right now, as we speak, it’s being written. I’ve had 15 drafts evolving. I definitely want to do that again because I really enjoyed doing ‘Prometheus’.”
Though the Prometheus movies take place in the same universe as Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, and are precursors to those movies, audiences shouldn’t get their hopes up in regards to seeing characters encountering a xenomorph anytime soon, if ever. He says:
The beast is done. Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It’s very hard to repeat that. I just happen to be the one who forced it through because they said it’s obscene. They didn’t want to do it and I said, ‘I want to do it, it’s fantastic’. But after four, I think it wears out a little bit. There’s only so much snarling you can do. I think you’ve got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we’ve found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start.
I’m not going to lie, that’s a little bit disappointing (however, I do like that he conveniently doesn’t count the Alien versus Predator movies). Part of the excitement of those films is the idea of seeing Giger’s iconic monsters on a movie screen again. Still, there are ample opportunities for more creatures, as we’ve already seen, and for all of its flaws and faults, one thing Prometheus does do well is set an ominous tone and mood, so there’s that to look forward to.
Scott even goes on to give a little bit of what we might see in Prometheus 2, saying, “You’ll probably have to go with [Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw] and [Michael Fassbender’s android David] – without his head. Find out how he gets his head back on!”
Moving on to Blade Runner 2, it sounds like, though it is in the works, it’s less formed, less far along in the process. He does confirm that there is a finished script and says, “It’s a sequel – it’s what happens next. It’s quite surprisingly clever.”
Star Harrison Ford is obviously also very busy at the moment filming Star Wars: Episode VII, but he and Scott have met. Scott even says they got together the night before Ford injured his leg on the set, specifically to talk about Blade Runner 2, and he adds, “I hope I had nothing to do with it.”
So while it sounds like both of these movies are steadily moving forward, the process is not a rapid one. Perhaps they’ll start to build momentum when the finish line for The Martian is in sight and Scott tries to line up his follow up projects.
