The Alien franchise is my all-time favorite, which places me in a weird spot when it comes to the next installments.

What should I want to see more, Neill Blomkamp‘s Alien, which would create a new path following the events of James Cameron’s Aliens, or Ridley Scott’s now-filming Alien: Covenant, the Prometheus sequel that’s building a bridge to his 1979 seminal classic, Alien?

I think I’d have to go with the latter, especially since Blomkamp’s work has been of constant disappointment (Elysium, Chappie) since his District 9 broke him onto the scene.

But forget what I want for a second. Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in Alien, Aliens, Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection, is all-in on Blomkamp’s sequel, which would chart a new course that avoid the events in Alien3 and Resurrection. This isn’t too surprising considering she starred in Chappie, which proves that Blomkamp an actor friendly director that warrants repeat collaborations.

Weaver’s support of Blomkamp is what lit a fire under FOX’s ass to hire the filmmaker to develop the next Alien, although this happened before Chappie‘s disappointing release. It also caught the attention of Scott, who decided that his Prometheus sequel was more important, and thus moved forward with his newly-titled Alien: Covenant. Having the creator of the franchise back onboard was clearly more important than continuing the story of Ripley with a director whose track record was sinking quicker than the Titanic. That’s why FOX put Blomkamp’s vision “on hold,” although it’s likely dead.

Even though FOX has moved on, Weaver has not, and continues to support Blomkamp’s defunct project for one major reason: it offers an ending to Ripley’s nightmare.

“It’s a great story and it’s satisfying to me to give this woman an ending,” Weaver told EW. “The script itself has so much in it that’s so original, but also really satisfies the, I would say, the primal needs of the aliens. It’s a tribute to all of the great work that the other directors have done, in a way, but goes in a completely new direction. I hope we’ll do it.”

Weaver has been clamoring for an Alien 5 for years, which she hoped would take Ripley to the Xenomorph home planet to “destroy them all.” Too bad it looks as if scheduling issues will send this project into the depths of space where nobody can hear it scream. James Cameron’s Avatar could put the nail in the coffin:

“Fox asked us to delay so Ridley could shoot his [second] ‘Prometheus’ movie. That was too bad because we would have already done it by now. Now that we’re waiting for that, I have a couple of ‘Avatars’ to do and Neill has ‘The Gone World,’ so we’ll have to see what happens when we get back, when those projects are over.”

Blomkamp had been working on the project for a year, which means there is a screenplay ready to go. But at some point Cameron is going to begin filming several Avatar sequels that will kill Weaver’s time. I don’t think there’s any reason to think we’ll see this project happen, and need to accept the fact that Ripley’s conclusion is that of a clone who mothered a half human, half Xenomorph birthed by the Queen.

Reaffirming multiple reports, Blomkamp’s Alien will redirect the story from the third and fourth installments, David Fincher’s Alien3 1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection (1997).

“It’s just as if, you know, the path forks and one direction goes off to three and four and another direction goes off to Neill’s movie,” Weaver says. “It’s just more, I would say, following Jim Cameron’s story about these characters, rather than just ending up in this sort of monastery in space, which was [Alien3 screenwriter] Vincent Ward’s idea and Fox elected to go in that direction. I think Fincher was fine with that. Each director kind of wanted to create a whole new set of circumstances. In this case, it picks up, it follows directly the circumstances of Jim Cameron’s ‘Aliens’.”

Maybe we’ll learn more at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con panel that reunites the Aliens crew for the 30th anniversary.