While he was surprisingly left out of the Academy Award nominations (for directing at least), director Ridley Scott is coming off of great success with The Martian and is currently gearing up to return to the property that helped make him a household name: Alien. The sequel to the prequel (that is, the follow up to Prometheus, which served as a prequel to Alien...) is titled Alien: Covenant, and will be the next film in the franchise. The plan is to have two more to fill the gap between Prometheus and Alien.
A few weeks back, we learned the plot of Alien: Covenant, which finds the crew of the colony ship Covenant headed for a remote planet, until they find a ‘paradise’ planet occupied solely by David (Michael Fassbender), the survivor of the Prometheus expedition. Now, Scott has revealed the MPAA rating he expects the film to receive.
Per AVP Galaxy, Scott shares that Alien: Covenant will be rated R. Or, in the director’s own words, “I’m going to do pretty hard R, pretty tough.” This continues a trend for the franchise where, besides AVP: Alien vs. Predator, every film has been rated R.
Scott revealed this fact and more about the film in an interview a few days ago after winning a Golden Globe for The Martian. When asked about the franchise’s horror undertones, Scott shared this (and perhaps shedding light on what he means by ‘hard R’):
“I always remember walking down the edge in Saint Louis when we were previewing [Alien]. I couldn’t sit through the film one more time. I walked down the edge into the kitchen scene when John Hurt started to bring up his breakfast. That moment, I realized how pretty scary the film was… I felt a sense of responsibility that, "Had I gone too far?" because it was extreme. I’m going to try and do that again this year, but much worse.”
So apparently he got over thinking he went too far, seeing as he wants to do it again, "but much worse." It’s nice to see that there doesn’t seem to be any forfeiture or artistic license in order to expand the size of the audience, especially after the success of The Martian.
And while he may not be up for Best Director for that film, he is a producer, so he does have a shot with Best Picture. And who knows, maybe the film that brought him fame 30+ years ago will help fill that empty spot on his mantle when Alien:Covenant comes out in October 2017.
