Following months of effort to reboot the show with M. Night Shyamalan, TNT is losing complete hope on the upcoming horror program. In fact, legal issues are delaying development, according to TNT and TBS President Kevin Reilly.

Reilly said,

That one got really caught up in a complete legal mess unfortunately with a very complicated underlying rights structure. We lost so much time, so I said, ‘Look, I’m not waiting around four years for this thing’. Maybe that will come back around but in the meantime, Ridley Scott had come up, who has so much creative enthusiasm.

With all the time lost, Reilly is now leaning toward a new sci-fi programming in collaboration with Ridley Scott (Alien: Covenant, Prometheus) that could launch in 2018. Reilly appears to still have interest in horror programming, but is willing to put it aside until something more concrete comes up.

There’s still no specific detail about Scott’s new sci-fi show, but we’ll be sure to keep Yellers in the loop as soon as they make an official annoucement.

This week Empire Magazine got their hands on exclusive new photos, which appear to reveal plot points from Alien: Covenant, so if you fear you’ve already seen too much then it would be wise to skip this post entirely. However, you can still check out brand new crew message clips that give you more insight on key characters without ruin the film. In fact, the better you get to know them, the better experience you’ll have when you watch Alien: Covenant next month.

The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imagination, they must attempt a harrowing escape.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Alien: Covenant stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, and Benjamin Rigby.

The film hits theaters on May 19th from 20th Century Fox.

In some shape or form, Demián Bichir (The Hateful Eight) will be playing alongside Michael Fassbender in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant. The second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction.

There’s no official word on which role Bichir will play yet, but according to Variety, the actor has a guaranteed spot in the Alien film, which will also star Katherine Waterston (Steve Jobs), and there’s talk that Danny McBride is in negotiations for a co-starring role. For those unfamiliar with Birchir, he was previously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in 2011’s A Better Life and appeared in many TV series and movies, including The Bridge, Weeds, No News From God, Savages, and Machete Kills, just to name a few.

Alien: Covenant is currently slated to hit theaters on October 6th, 2017. Stay tuned to Yell! Magazine for more Alien news to come.

Alien: Covenant Synopsis

Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.”

We’ll have them all: Egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, then the big boy. They’re going to go to the planet where the engineers came from, and come across the evolving creature that they had made. Why did they make it? Why would they make such a terrifying beast? It felt bio-mechanoid, it felt like a weapon. And so the movie will explain that, and reintroduce the alien back into it. – Ridley Scott on the upcoming Alien: Covenant, via The Wrap

Following the success of The Martian, FOX is teaming up with director Ridley Scott again for a new chapter in the Alien franchise, which is expected to be a follow up to Prometheus and will also connect to the first Alien film released in 1979.

Officially titled Alien: Covenant, the science fiction film will star Michael Fassbender, a “synthetic” droid named David who is the sole inhabitant of a “dark, dangerous world”, which gets discovered by the crew of a colony ship (Covenant).

Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the ‘synthetic’ David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

A title treatment for the film has been revealed above and it’s currently slated for theaters on October 6th, 2017. Filming for Alien: Covenant will begin early next year.

In an interview with Empire, Ridley Scott talked at length about his sequel to Prometheus, which will also be a prequel to his 1979 movie, Alien.

Curiosity was piqued yesterday, September 24th, when Scott revealed the official title of his film, Alien: Paradise Lost, as people basically wondered, what does it all mean? At one point, simply Paradise was going to be the title, but it seems that quiet contemplation on Scott’s part has changed his course on a few things.

Aside from the title change, it seems that Scott has also debunked the idea that there won’t be any xenomorphs in Alien: Paradise Lost, stating: “I think I have to go again [with the H.R. Giger xenomorph]; we will see who made it, and why. That’s what’s interesting.” This, of course, is a result of his concept for the movie:

Years ago, I kept mulling over what Alien 2 could be. I was fiddling around with some ideas. I was always fascinated with why this thing [the xenomorph] would be made, by whom, and for what purpose? The planet it was on – and I was looking at the dark side of the moon – would be called Paradise. Paradise is a very ominous word…”

Scott also said that he’s “backing into the first Alien” and that he’s “even got connections with Ripley [in this], but [he’s] not telling [us] what.”

Alien: Paradise Lost is projected for a 2017 release, which will be followed by Neill Blomkamp’s sequel, Alien 5.

The beast is done. Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It’s very hard to repeat that. I just happen to be the one who forced it through because they said it’s obscene. They didn’t want to do it and I said, ‘I want to do it, it’s fantastic.’ But after four, I think it wears out a little bit. There’s only so much snarling you can do. I think you’ve got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we’ve found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start. – Ridley Scott on skipping the inclusion of H.R. Giger’s Xenomorphs in Prometheus 2 (Yahoo! Movies UK)

Sometimes, you can’t decide whether a movie is good or bad. And in 99% of those cases, that movie is Prometheus, which should have a Rotten Tomatoes score of “Eh?” Every other day, I change my opinion on it. Sometimes, I think that it’s full of incredibly tense sequences, and is beautiful to look at it. And other times, I wonder how they wrote the script to it. Was it passed down, by unreliable word of mouth, until it finally got down to Damon Lindelof, who had to piece together the garbled rumors of other screenwriters? Or did Ridley Scott pull “Alien prequel” ideas out of a hat at random, and only stopped when he got to a thousand slips of paper? I have no idea. Ask me tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll be the best movie ever by then.

The best things about a Prometheus 2 is that it might improve upon Prometheus, or at least be a coherent movie. And it’s been reported that director Ridley Scott has been scouting locations in Australia for the film since May 21st. Prometheus 2 is set to start shooting this fall, so unless Ridley plans to make his Blade Runner sequel in a few weeks, we should probably get ready for an explosion of not-quite-Xenomorph news coming later this year.

Blade Runner Sequel

Almost three decades later, Ridley Scott is inevitably returning to sci-fi cinema once again to helm the sequel to Blade Runner. The original is regarded as a landmark in the film industry, alongside Alien, and is also considered the greatest science-fiction film of all time by a majority of genre publications.

Last year, it was revealed that screenwriter Hampton Fancher, who adapted Blade Runner with David Peoples from Philip K. Dick’s groundbreaking novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? would be writing the script for the sequel. However, it was announced yesterday that Michael Green is in negotiations to rewrite Alcon Entertainment’s Blade Runner sequel penned by Fancher. The original story/screenplay that Fancher wrote is set some years after the first film concluded.

Lastly, Alcon and Yorkin previously announced that they are partnering to produce Blade Runner theatrical sequels and prequels, in addition to all television and interactive productions in the future.

Noomi Repace – Credit: Twentieth Century Fox

“They’re working on the script. I met Ridley in London a couple of weeks ago. I would love to work with him again and I know that he would like to do another one. It’s just like we need to find the right story. I hope we will.”

“It’s interesting because people, most people I’ve talked to, who’ve seen the movie, see things that are quite different. Some people who see the movie many times discover new things. There are all these religious aspects and there are very interesting conversations. And for me, if we do a second one, there are a lot of things to explore in there and to continue. I would love to do it.”

Stay tuned to Yell! Magazine as this story unfolds.

Rock Hard \m/