The Alien franchise is back with director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, which has scared up over $100 million at the worldwide box office in its first few days of release. Set between the events of Alien and Aliens, the new movie is the seventh installment in the main Alien series and the first to be released by Disney. Will it eventually spawn an eighth installment?
Chatting with The Hollywood Reporter this week, Fede Alvarez has revealed that he and co-writer Rodo Sayagues (Evil Dead) already have some early Alien: Romulus sequel ideas.
WARNING – THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ALIEN: ROMULUS SPOILERS…
In Alien: Romulus, “While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
The sole survivors of the mission are Cailee Spaeny’s Rain Carradine and her android brother Andy (David Jonsson), who seek a better future on the planet Yvaga at the end of the film.
If Romulus does spawn a sequel, it sounds like we’ll be heading to Yvaga with the duo.
“Yes, I definitely can [pitch a sequel right now],” Alvarez explains. “We tend to do that naturally, not even thinking about sequels. For us, movies have not become franchises, tentpoles and sequels. This is a language that I’ve only learned in the last ten years of my life working [in Hollywood]. For me, it’s always been about story.”
He continues, “So, once we finished, we started thinking, ‘What do you think happens when or if they get to Yvaga? Is it going to be great? Or is it a terrible place?’ We tend to believe it’s probably a terrible place that they think is great and fantasize about, so we naturally started thinking about where it goes and what’s going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we go, ‘Oh, that sounds like a sequel.’ But we really try to think about it more in terms of story and if it needs another chapter and whether people want to know what happens next.”
“So we’ll wait to see what people think and if people ask for it,” Alvarez adds. “My philosophy is that you should never make [a sequel] in two years. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to get the audience to really want it. If you think about Alien and Aliens, there’s seven years between them. But we definitely have ideas about where it should go.”
