Twentieth Century Fox has confirmed what we reported over the weekend that director Ridley Scott’s Prometheus sequel/still an Alien prequel had undergone a name change from Alien: Paradise Lost to Alien: Covenant. The confirmation comes via the Prometheus film Facebook page.
The studio has released a titles treatment, which you can see above, and a plot synopsis that you can read in the next paragraph.
Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
There are a few things to unpack from this short paragraph, chief of them being no mention of Noomi Rapace’s Prometheus character Elizabeth Shaw, whom we saw at the end of that film heading out into space with Fassbender’s David to search out the origins of the Engineers, the creators of the alien xenomorphs who have been terrorizing humanity throughout the Alien franchise. Has something happened to the character in the space between films? She is confirmed for appearing in the sequel, so will that appearance be confined to flashbacks, or will she make a dramatic appearance at some point.
Also worth noting is one of the word in the description of the planet that will be found by the crew of the Covenant – “paradise.” As noted above, the original title of this sequel was Alien: Paradise Lost, which led to some speculation as to how the classic poem by John Milton which tells the story of the fall of Satan from Heaven, the creation of sin and the ultimate expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, would be related to this film’s story.
Plenty of time to ponder those things as Alien: Covenant is scheduled for an October 6, 2017 release.
