Neil Blomkamp's Alien 5 not happening, says Ridley Scott

Twentieth Century Fox's long-running "Alien" film franchise series director and Hollywood veteran Ridley Scott has stated that the proposed "Alien 5" film by "Elysium" and "District 9" director Neil Blomkamp isn't happening.

In an interview with Allocine where he was promoting his upcoming new prequel "Alien: Covenant", Scott gave an update on Blomkamp's film which was supposed to be the fifth numerical film in the series.

Scott suggested that the project is pretty much dead in the water.

“There was never a script,” Scott stated bluntly. “It was an idea that evolved from, I believe, a 10-page pitch, and I was meant to be part of the producers on that. It didn’t evolve. Fox decided that they didn’t want to do it and that was it. I’d already done ‘Prometheus’ and I was planning ‘Covenant’ so I dunno.”

With Blomkamp now out of the picture and Scott's "Alien: Covenant" being the latest installment that looks to tie some loose ends between the events of "Prometheus" and the first "Alien" film of 1979, the future of the Alien franchise is back to being an open book.

Back when 20th Century Fox first announced the project in 2015, Blomkamp enthusiastically shared some concept art and material proposing the direction the sequel was going for - picking up after "Aliens" and ignoring the events of "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection."

It was even rumored that popular characters from the second film would return, with Sigourney Weaver's Ripley, Michael Biehn's Col. Hicks, and a grown up version of child survivor Newt.

"They’re planning on bringing me and Newt back, and at this point Newt will be around twenty-seven years old," Biehn said. "I know that every actress in Hollywood is going to want to play this one, it’s really a passing of the torch between Sigourney and this younger actress who would play Newt."

Alien: Covenant opens debuts in the Philippines on May 10 courtesy of 20th Century Fox. — TJD, GMA News