You know the saying, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

While we wish we were announcing something to celebrate this holiday weekend, we have some pretty disappointing news.

Neill Blomkamp took to Twitter to announced that his untitled Alien sequel, which would follow Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, has been put on hold, indefinitely.

It’s not all that surprising considering Scott has been prepping to shoot his Prometheus sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost, early next year. This would mean that Blomkamp’s production would be pushed until after Scott could finish his Alien film, set for release in 2017. Furthermore, it would mean that Blomkamp wouldn’t be able to begin pre-production until mid-2017 at the earliest.

With that said, it’s sort of bizarre that Blomkamp is publicly announcing that he’s moving on to other projects.

Scott had revealed plans to do several Prometheus sequels, so why wouldn’t Blomkamp continue to develop and prepare his Alien in the meantime? This is all sort of telling and was foreshadowed a few months ago when we felt Blomkamp’s second Twitter campaign of images was a sign of desperation (he also did it again two weeks ago).

Twentieth Century Fox had announced Blomkamp’s involvement in the next Alien before Scott had decided what to do with his Prometheus sequels and before Blomkamp’s Chappie failed miserably at the box office. It could be that there’s been a lot of spinning wheels, for the fans’ sake, and that it has run its course. But this is all speculation.

We had reported back in August that Scott’s newly revived interest in the franchise had put a wrench in Blomkamp and FOX’s plans. I absolutely love Scott’s Prometheus (I know I’m in the minority) and am dying to see the full arc realized. It’s going to be such a wonderful fan moment when that franchise finally bridges with his original Alien film. It had felt as if Blomkamp was born to revive the franchise – and maybe he did, ironically, even if he’s no longer part of the plans – and it’s a bummer that he may never be able to realize his dream.

Whatever the case, we have several years of Alien sequels lined up, and now that Scott isn’t shying away from using Alien in the title, I expect more terror to ensue on the Engineers’ home planet.

alien is kinda holding/ pending prometheus 2. So I shall be working on other things… as much as I love the xeno- and Lt ripley

— Иeill BlomkΛmp (@NeillBlomkamp) October 30, 2015