Ridley Scott comments on future of Alien franchise

With the release of Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott claimed that there would be plenty more Alien movies on the horizon. Seeing how the followup to Prometheus underperformed at the box office, however, many were skeptical about this franchise’s future.

Scott recently discussed the future of the franchise on the Empire podcast, as reported by The Playlist. The director seemed to suggest that both Covenant and Prometheus were financially successful enough to ensure more installments.

“We did Prometheus for a pretty good price… and we made $450 [million worldwide],” he said. “So you go, ‘Wow, there’s life in the dog.’ So now we go again on Covenant, which is again roughly the same price four years later. So it’s very frugal, but a very ambitious film, and we did well again. It’s really about business, but it’s commerce [versus] art. Filmmaking will be that and should be that, unless you’re making films for $100,000. If you’re making films for $1,000,000 that’s a lot of money to lose. If you’re making films for $260 million you should be shot.”

Covenant ultimately made $240.4 million worldwide on a $97 million budget. While Scott seems to think these returns were good enough, others would argue that it might be time to just let the series die. Since they’re making another Terminator, though, it wouldn’t be surprising if Scott pushed forward on the next Alien.