Well what a bummer that would have been.
Ridley Scott has revealed that originally he had a far more gruesome end in mind for Alien in which Sigourney Weaver's iconic badass, Ellen Ripley met her maker.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly to promote the latest installment of the franchise, Alien: Covenant, Scott revealed that instead of sending the harpooned Xenomorph out into space, the proposed that the alien should get the better of Ripley.
“I thought that the alien should come in, and Ripley harpoons it and it makes no difference, so it slams through her mask and rips her head off.” Next, Scott says, he’d have cut to the tentacles of the alien pressing buttons on the dashboard. “It would mimic Captain Dallas [Skerritt] saying, ‘I’m signing off.'”
Could you imagine it? One of the most iconic female action heroes of all time cut down before she even got started. We could have been deprived of one of the greatest series of screenings that the Light House Cinema have ever put on.
Luckily, when Scott pitched that ending to a Fox executive they were less than thrilled with the idea.
“The first executive from Fox arrived on set within 14 hours, threatening to fire me on the spot,” says Scott with a laugh. “So we didn’t do that [ending].”
Fans and probably Weaver, are very grateful to that executive.
Speaking of Weaver, she told The Hollywood Reporter that filming on Avatar 2 is set to begin this Autumn.
“We’re starting training, and we’re starting — hmm, I probably can’t say anything. We will be actually shooting it by the fall.”
The film was originally slated for a December 2018 release but fans were disappointed when news broke earlier this year that the film won't meet that deadline.