Fat Alvarez Alien: Romulus hits theaters this week and is already looking set to be a box office hit, amassing a $110 million global opening weekend off an $80 million budget—and the writer-director is already thinking about what’s coming next.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week Evil Dead and Do not breathe director teased that ideas are coming to a Alien: Romulus sequel, which – if it comes to fruition – would be the eighth installment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise.
If you haven’t seen Alien: Romulus yet, spoilers follow – so watch it before you read on!
Starring Cailee Spaeny (Civil war, Priscilla), David Jonsson (Murder is easy), Archie Renaux (Shadow and bone), Isabela Merced (The last of us), Spike Fearn (Aftersun) and newcomer Aileen Wu, Alien: Romulus takes place between Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 Foreigners:
While scouring the depths of an abandoned space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
The end of Alien: Romulus saw Spaeny’s Rain Carradine survive his battle with the Xenomorphs (just!) and fly to the planet Yvaga with his Weyland-Yutani android brother Andy (Jonsson) in tow.
When asked by THR about what the future holds for Rain and Andy, Alvarez confirmed that he and co-writer Rodo Sayagues could “pitch something tomorrow” for a potential Romulus successor:
Yes, I certainly can. We tend to do it naturally without thinking about sequels. For us, films have not become franchises, tentpoles and sequels. This is a language that I have only learned in the last ten years of my life working here. For me it has always been about history. So when we finished, we started thinking, “What do you think will happen when or if they come to your Yvaga? Will it be great? Or is it a terrible place?” We tend to think it’s probably a terrible place the think is fantastic and fantasize about, so naturally we started thinking about where it’s going and what’s going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we’re like, “Oh, that sounds like a sequel.”
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However, Alvarez was also quick to point out that he is in no particular rush to get a sequel out:
But we’re really trying to think about it more in terms of the story and whether it needs another chapter and whether people want to know what happens next. So we’re waiting to see what people think and if people ask for it. My philosophy is that you should never make [a sequel] in two years. You have to get away. You have to make the audience really want it. If you think about it Alien and Foreignersthere are seven years between them. But we definitely have ideas about where it should go.
So it sounds promisingly positive that Alien: Romulus adventure will continue. Whether Ridley Scott will return as a producer remains to be seen, but given that he has been called Romulus “f***ing great”, we can imagine he’ll be there with bells on.
Hopefully this sequel will give people what they want – one Alien vs. Predator face-off between Alvarez and Exchange‘s Dan Trachtenberg. Either way, we’re sitting on day one.