For some reason I figured it would be a couple of years before we heard that Twentieth Century Fox was pulling the plug on the Ridley Scott-directed Alien prequel. It appears I was terribly wrong as Scott, director of the original ’79 sci-fi chiller, is already casting up a strong female lead. The film will pre-date the existence of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), so a new tough hottie must be found. According to the Playlist (via the Sunday Times), The Disappearance of Alice Creed‘s starlet Gemma Arterton is meeting with Scott. “Ridley Scott saw ‘Alice Creed’ and loved it. He wants me to meet for Aliens: The Remake, or something,” Arterton told the paper. Obviously, this is quite early in the casting process and nothing is official until the name is on the dotted line. Penned by Jon Spaihts, the film follows the crew of a commercial towing ship returning to Earth that is awakened and sent to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planetoid. The crew discovers too late that the signal generated by an empty ship was meant to warn them.
