Alien Covenant hits Irish cinemas this Friday and it’s sure to be a box office hit.

Already director (and absolute legend) Ridley Scott has been talking about the sequel to it.

The good news is production is starting as early as next year as Scott commented: "we're writing [a sequel] now, as we speak. I'll be filming that within 14 months."

Scott also discussed the planned Alien 5 movie which it would seem has definitely ceased to be.

"They wanted to do Alien, er, Awakening - Neill Blomkamp", he explained to IGN. "I said fine. I was going to be the producer. If I could have, I would have. Except I do question - why have both [Blomkamp's Alien and Scott's Alien] out there? It seems like shooting your big toe off - it doesn't make sense.

"But they didn't go forward with it, Fox, so I just kind of kept out of it. I mean, I'd literally ignited this thing to bring it off the ground again, because it was lying there dormant on a shelf. I had this thing to bring it back up - but here we are."

But there's more good news still as Scott said he was happy enough to keep making Alien films as long as the writing maintains a high standard: "It's good when it's good. If the sequel's good, then it's worthwhile."