20th Century Fox's Logan has been generating lots of positive buzz ahead of its premiere in theaters this week, but James Mangold's Wolverine movie isn't the only R-Rated franchise movie that Fox has waiting in the wings. The studio also has Alien: Covenant, director Ridley Scott's Alien prequel/Prometheus sequel - a film that was originally slated to arrive in August of this year. Fox has since moved the R-Rated sci-fi/horror thriller up to a prime May date, suggesting the studio is confident about what Scott has delivered in his third go-round on the Alien franchise.
Covenant, like Logan, has been building significant momentum since its showing at Fox's New York press event this past December, during which the first trailer and several clips from the new Alien installment were screened. Following the release of a four-minute prologue (ominously titled "Last Supper") that introduces the main human characters in the film, Fox has now officially released the second theatrical trailer for Covenant.
The new Covenant trailer, which you can watch above, contains a good deal of previously-unreleased footage from the movie; including, but not limited to, more material featuring the new version of the iconic Xenomorph featured in the film - a creature that costar Michael Fassbender has referred to as being the "Neomorph". As the second Covenant trailer illustrates, the Neomorph spawns from the poisoned ecosystem of the "dark, dangerous world" that the members of the colony spaceship Covenant's crew find their way to, upon responding to a distress call that takes them off-course from their original destination.
It's not yet clear who sends the distress call that brings the Covenant away from their original, intended "paradise" world destination (hence the tagline in the new trailer, "The Path to paradise begins in hell"). One obvious explanation would be that Prometheus protagonist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), who is reportedly going to appear in Alien: Covenant, sent the distress signal upon landing on the planet several years before, as a warning for others to stay away. Elizabeth might well be the mysterious hooded figure who can be glimpsed briefly in the new Covenant trailer.
The original title that Scott himself announced for Alien: Covenant was Alien: Paradise Lost and it's easier to see where that title came from, based on what we've seen of and learned about the film, thus far. Shaw, accompanied by Fassbender's android David (his head still severed from his body), set off in search of the Engineers' homeworld at the end of Prometheus and she may well have found that "paradise" (see Katherine Waterston's Daniels finding a dogtag that reads "Dr. E. Shaw" in the new trailer). The new Covenant trailer suggests the Engineers' world is now devoid of life, save for the black spores and Neomorph eggs that were created by the mysterious extraterrestrials (assuming it's the same planet featured in Covenant).
If that's the case, then Covenant will help to further bridge the gap between Prometheus and Scott's original Alien, as far as dangling plot threads from Prometheus go. There are plenty of other lingering questions that the Covenant script by John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall) will need to address too - such as, what happened to David anyway - if it's to further bring Scott's new Alien installment full-circle to his original 1979 movie that started it all.
NEXT: Everything We Know About Alien: Covenant (So Far)
Source: 20th Century Fox