It looks like Neill Blomkamp's proposed Alien 5 is now completely dead. What started off as a series of independent paintings commissioned by the director and released via Instagram, quickly went viral. Fans were excited and it caught the eye of Alien franchise rights holder 20th Century Fox. The images featured Sigourney Weaver's iconic character Ripley along with Michael Biehn's character Hicks (who was unceremoniously killed off in Alien 3).

The studio contacted Blomkamp and put together a deal to produce the film. Afterwards, less and less was being heard about the project as rumors of it being put on the chopping block began to surface. Original Alien director Ridley Scott has since indicated that the project is likely never going to happen, as there was never even an Alien 5 script firmly in place.

In an interview with The Verge, Blomkamp revealed that he has very little hope the film will ever get made. Here's what he told the outlet when asked if Alien 5 was dead:

I think it's totally dead, yes. That would be an accurate assumption at this point. It’s sad. I spent a long time working on that, and I feel like it was really pretty awesome. But politically, the way it’s gone now, and the way that it all is — it’s just not going to live.

When asked to clarify if he meant studio politics by saying "politically," Blomkamp gave a bit more context.

Yeah. Ridley [Scott] was one of my idols growing up. He's so talented and he's made this film that really set me off in a direction. I want to just be as respectful and not go stamping around in this world that he created. I think that if the circumstances were different, and I didn't feel like I was getting too close to something that he obviously feels a massive personal connection to, that things that may have played out differently. But I did want to be as respectful as possible.

For those who have been following this stor,y it seems that Scott was the one who was pushing to kill the project off. All of his comments regarding the project seemed to indicate that he was far more interested in telling the origins of the Xenomorphs and the Engineers (a la Prometheus and Alien: Covenant) rather than continuing Ripley's story. Since he is essentially in charge of the franchise, Fox probably acquiesced to Scott's wishes.

While Alien: Covenant has been mostly successful at the box office, it probably won't make anywhere near as much as Prometheus (see Covenant's hefty Friday-to-Friday drop-off, for case in point). That begs the question of whether audiences want to see the Xenomorph in action again (by way of Scott's planned Covenant sequel) or whether they would rather see Weaver's Ripley battle the signature creature once more. With Blomkamp's Alien 5 all but dead, we may never find out the answer to that question.

NEXT: 15 Burning Questions We Have After Alien: Covenant

Source: The Verge