Sigourney Weaver Teases Further Details About Possible Return To ‘Alien’ Franchise

Sigourney Weaver has given further details about a potential return to the Alien franchise, MovieWeb reports.

First appearing in the 1979 original in the iconic role of Ellen Ripley, Weaver would go on to star in three sequels before stepping away from the series after 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. Initially lured back in 2015 by the prospect of working with director Neill Blomkamp, who pitched a follow-up that retconned Resurrection and the earlier Alien 3, the actress later expressed disinterest in a comeback after the project was cancelled.

Now, however, a return for Ripley may still be in the cards, as Weaver teased last month in a New York Comic Con Alien reunion panel that she had met with Disney and 20th Century Studios executives, as well as series producer Walter Hill, who is currently writing a script for a new sequel:

…Walter Hill is a very good friend of mine, and he wrote 50 pages of where Ripley would be now, and they’re quite extraordinary..I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I have had a meeting with Fox or Disney…What Walter has written seems so true to me, as very much about the society that would incarcerate someone who has tried to help mankind, but she’s a problem to them, so she’s sort of tucked away. I think it’s a very strong first 50 pages. I’m thinking about working with Walter to see what the rest of the story would be.

Weaver has since elaborated further on the script, saying,

…there’s something about her experience being sidelined now, probably by this society, by this company, by this world, and being probably around 200 years old, but still Ripley and, you know, presumably these problems still out there…It would not be running around through airshafts. It would be a very different kind of story.

In the meantime, the Alien series itself has experienced a bit of a resurgence with 2024’s Alien: Romulus grossing $350 worldwide against an $80 million budget and earning an 80% Fresh Critical Score on Rotten Tomatoes, while the FX TV series Alien: Earth has recently been renewed for a second season.