Ridley Scott's Next Alien Film Has Found Its Writer

I will tell anyone who asks that Alien is one of the best films ever put on a screen, so when news breaks that Ridley Scott is circling it again, I put the kettle on and sit down properly. According to Bloody Disgusting, Scott has brought in Aaron Guzikowski, the writer and creator behind the science fiction series Raised by Wolves, to write a new entry in the Alien franchise. Scott directed the original 1979 film and has returned to the universe several times since, most recently with Alien: Covenant in 2017.

If you've never seen Raised by Wolves, it's a show Guzikowski created for HBO Max about an android raising human children on a strange planet, after a war wipes out Earth as they know it. It ran for two seasons before being cancelled, and it shares something obvious with Alien beyond the genre: it's just as interested in artificial life, in what a created being owes its creators, and in how badly that relationship can go. That's not a small detail. It's the exact ground Scott has been circling since Prometheus.

What's actually confirmed, and what isn't

Here's where I have to be careful, because this is the point where a story like this usually runs away from itself. What's confirmed, according to Bloody Disgusting's report, is that Guzikowski is writing the project for Scott, and that it is connected to David, the android played by Michael Fassbender. David first appeared in Prometheus in 2012, and returned in Alien: Covenant in 2017, where he turned out to be one of the more quietly disturbing figures in the whole series. Beyond that connection, no plot details have been confirmed.

What has also been confirmed, and this matters because I've already seen people assume otherwise, is that this is not a sequel to Alien: Romulus, the 2024 film directed by Fede Alvarez. Romulus sits in its own corner of the timeline, between the original Alien and Aliens, and this new project is a separate thing entirely, tied instead to the Prometheus and Covenant side of the story. I'm not going to guess at plot, timeline placement or returning characters here, because nobody actually knows yet, and I'd rather tell you what's true than make something up to fill the gap.

Why the David connection is the interesting bit

Of everything in this story, the David link is what's keeping me thinking about it days later. David was built to be useful and ended up being the most dangerous thing in two films, and that's a rich seam for a writer who already spent two seasons asking whether a created being can love, resent or betray the people who made it. Pairing that specific actor and that specific character with a writer whose entire last show lived in that question feels less like a random franchise refresh and more like someone actually sat down and thought about tone before they thought about marketing.

I'll be honest, this is also exactly the kind of casting-and-writer news that tends to go quiet for a long stretch afterwards. Scott has multiple projects on the go at any given time, and not everything he's attached to gets made on the timeline anyone hopes for. So I'm filing this one under "genuinely excited" rather than "already planning my watch party", because the gap between a writer being announced and a finished film can be a long one.

Where this leaves me

I came to Alien the way a lot of people my age did, late at night, with the lights off and absolutely no idea what I was about to sit through, and it's stayed near the top of my list ever since. A new entry built around David rather than another round of xenomorphs-in-a-corridor is the version of this franchise I actually want someone to make, because the android has always been the part of these films that unsettles me longest after the credits. I'll be watching for updates on this one properly, not just as news to pass along.

So tell me honestly: are you a Prometheus and Covenant defender, or do you think Scott should have left David's story where Covenant ended it? I have a strong opinion on this and I'd like to argue about it with someone other than my own television.