It sounds like we may see Sigourney Weaver return to the Alien franchise after all.
The recent rumor that the next movie might be set to bring Weaver back to play a de-aged Ellen Ripley was met with a mixture of excitement and trepidation from fans of the classic sci-fi horror franchise, but Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez soon debunked the report as "fun gossip."
Ripley may not show up in the Romulus sequel, but it seems there may have been some truth to the rumor that the actress is thinking about revisiting her most famous role..
Weaver had the following to say during a panel appearance at New York Comic-Con.
“[‘Alien’ producer] 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,” Weaver on stage during a conversation moderated by Josh Horowitz. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I have had a meeting with Fox or Disney…I’ve never felt the need [to reprise the role]. I was always like, ‘Let her rest, let her recover.’ 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.”
"It would not be running around air shafts," she added. "It would be a very different kind of Alien with a really good script. Scary.”
So, if Weaver does decide to reprise her most iconic role, it sounds like she'll be playing Ripley without the use of de-ageing technology. If this is the case, we assume the events of both David Fincher's Alien 3 - which killed Ripley off - and Alien: Resurrection - which brought her back as a clone - will be ignored.
This would make a lot more sense than Ripley showing up in Romulus' timeline, since she would have been in cryosleep right up until the events of James Cameron's Aliens.
“But I love what he's done with the character," Weaver went on. "He really gets her strength and her anger and her humor, and it's very hard to write. It's surprisingly hard to write Ripley. Everybody makes you sound like a gym teacher. ‘All right, people, let's do business!’ So Walter has it.”
District 9 director Neill Blomkamp attempted to get an Alien movie starring Weaver and Michael Biehn (Hicks) off the ground a few years ago, but the project ended up being scrapped.