Despite both the critical and commercial success of Alien, the movie's director, Ridley Scott, was not asked to direct the sequel, Aliens. Alien was released by 20th Century Fox in 1979 and stars Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holmes, and Yaphet Kotto. The sci-fi horror movie follows the commercial space ship Nostromo's crew as they battle a deadly xenomorph that quickly decimates the crew, leaving one survivor, Ellen Ripley (Weaver). The film grossed $101.7 million worldwide upon its initial release. Alien was nominated for two Academy Awards, and spawned three sequels. The original movie jump-started a massively successful franchise that includes not only movies, but also novels, comics, and video games.

Alien's original script was co-created by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shushett (who penned the screenplay for Total Recall). After being snatched up by Brandywine Productions -- founded by filmmakers Walter Hill, David Giler, and Gordon Carroll -- the script underwent massive revisions. Although the final product was largely the work of Giler and Hill (who is working on a script for Alien 5), O'Bannon received a sole writing credit. According to an article in Variety, when it came time to hire a director, Scott was the producer's fourth choice. After they saw Ridley's first feature film, The Duelists (1977), which won the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best First Work, they offered Scott the job.

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The exit of 20th Century Fox studio head Alan Ladd Jr., and a lengthy legal battle over profits from Alien stalled plans for the sequel. Following the success of James Cameron's The Terminator (1984), Brandywine greenlit Aliens (1986) and tapped Cameron to write the screenplay and direct the sequel to Scott's hit. Sigourney Weaver reprised her role as Ellen Ripley, who returns to LV-426 to rescue colonists who have run afoul of an army of xenomorphs. Scott was never attached to the project. In a 2019 interview. Scott told THR why he didn't direct the sequel. “Interestingly enough, I was never asked to do the sequel. Maybe because I was such a tough guy when I was doing it, they didn’t want me back. But I was also in the habit of not wanting to do a sequel then either. So I would never have done it.” This was in the wake of the blowback over Scott's two Alien prequels. However, in 2012—when Scott was still working on Prometheushe spoke to THR, and wasn't so cavalier about being passed over, stating, "I was really p***ed off, frankly."

Aliens surpassed its predecessor at the box office, grossing $131 million worldwide, and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Two more movies followed Alien 3 (1992), directed by David Fincher, and Alien: Resurrection (1997), directed by Jean -Pierre Jeunet. Both movies follow Ellen Ripley's ongoing battle against the creatures. Cameron went on to make two of the highest-grossing films of all-time: Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009). Scott has enjoyed an illustrious career as a producer, as well as helming the films Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001). In September of this year, Scott told Forbes magazine he's in the process of developing other Alien movie.

"We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with Prometheus and Covenant. Whether or not we go directly back to that is doubtful because Prometheus woke it up very well. But you know, you’re asking fundamental questions like, ‘Has the Alien himself, the facehugger, the chestburster, have they all run out of steam? Do you have to rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word to franchise?’ That’s always the fundamental question.”

In 2015, Scott told THR he planned to reconnect with the Alien series with Prometheus as the first of three or more movies that would eventually revisit the creature that had audience members screaming, fainting, and even fleeing the theater in 1979. Alien: Covenant was released in 2017. In a May 2020 interview with the LA Times, Scott said that when he was making Alien, he pondered the origin of the xenomorph and the purpose of the ship and the eggs. These are the ideas that give Scott reason to believe the story is far from depleted.

NEXT: Alien 3: Why Killing Newt and Bishop Was The Right Move for the Franchise