When news broke that Ridley Scott's follow-up to Prometheus wasn't actually a Prometheus sequel, but a new Alien movie, everyone scratched their heads.

Wasn't Neill Blomkamp working on an Alien follow-up? Didn't he post a bunch of pictures on Instagram and everyone (us included) got ridiculously excited about that prospect? Yes and yes.

But now, it seems, order has been restored somewhat. Blomkamp took to Twitter late last night and confirmed what we all suspected - his Alien film is on the backburner.

In a sense, it makes sense. Ridley Scott's The Martian is doing silly money at the box-office and there's a whiff of Best Picture at the Oscars coming off it, so obviously 20th Century Fox want to capitalise on this rare uptick in Scott's quality now.

When we look at Blomkamp's last effort, Chappie, and how it underperformed, it's clear why Fox would back Scott's film over Blomkamp's. Don't get us wrong - we really, really wanted to see how he'd approach the Alien universe and we thought Chappie was unfairly maligned.

And yes, Prometheus was a bit of a disappointment - but we have to acknowledge that The Martian was really, really good and Scott obviously has a handle on how to do sci-fi again so we can't pass up the opportunity of him returning to the franchise.

Maybe now Neill Blomkamp will go off and do District 10?

 

Via Twitter