Before Ridley Scott went into production on Alien: Covenant, his sequel to Prometheus, director Neill Blomkamp had been developing a sequel to James Cameron‘s Aliens with Twentieth Century Fox. Sigourney Weaver was to reprise her role as Ellen Ripley, and since the film ignored Alien3, Michael Biehn was also to return as Cpl. Dwayne Hicks. It sounded really cool, even though it was clear it was just going to be an extremely expensive fan film (District 9, Elysium and Chappie prove this).

But I digress, when Scott’s Covenant was announced, Blomkamp’s sequel was put on the backburner. Since then, we’ve heard all sorts of crazy reports from the fact that Blomkamp never really had a script to Scott had put the brakes on the rival film because Star Wars had lit a fire inside of him to revive the Alien franchise. I think the truth actually resides within a handful of rumors, with many reports forgetting that Fox lost faith in the filmmaker after Chappie‘s box office bomb; his Alien was announced right before its release, and Fox immediately got cold feet and never truly planned to push it into active development.

With Blomkamp releasing his latest Aliens-inspired film, he’s opened up a bit about the development of his Alien, confirming both that Scott had it killed and that it’s most definitely dead.

“I think it’s totally dead, yes,” Blomkamp told the Verge. “That would be an accurate assumption at this point.”

He continued: “It’s sad. I spent a long time working on that, and I feel like it was really pretty impressive. But politically, the way it’s gone now, and the way that it all is — it’s just not going to live.”

In regards to Scott killing the project, Blomkamp confirms his vision touched on some of Scott’s fresh ideas: “Yeah. Ridley [Scott] was one of my idols growing up. He’s so talented and he’s made this film that really set me off in a direction. I want to just be as respectful and not go stamping around in this world that he created. I think that if the circumstances were different, and I didn’t feel like I was getting too close to something that he apparently feels a massive personal connection to, that things that may have played out differently. But I did want to be as respectful as possible.”

Covenant is floundering at the box office and even a sequel to Covenant is feeling unlikely at this time. Bizarrly, I wonder if Blomkamp’s more Aliens-centric vision would have been more successful…and I suspect the answer is “yes”?