As the June release date approaches, we're gradually learning more about Prometheus, while tantalisingly not really learning anything at all. Guy Pearce has said that his role is a small one, but we didn't yet know what that role actually was. Now though, thanks to a Hungarian interview with Ridley Scott picked up by the Alien fansite APN, we learn that he's playing a certain Peter Weyland.
That surname is one that should be familiar if you've been paying attention to the Alien films thus far: Weyland-Yutani is the shady mega-corporation responsible for the xenomorph outbreak in the first place. Paul Resier's odious Carter Burke was one of their executives in Aliens, and Lance Henriksen played company founder Charles Bishop Weyland in Alien vs Predator (the model for the Bishop androids we meet later).
"When the first Alien movie and Blade Runner were made," says Ridley, "I thought that in the near future the world would be owned by large companies. That's why we have the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner and Weyland-Yutani in Alien. They sent the Nostromo spaceship. The Prometheus is owned by an entrepreneur called Peter Weyland, who is played by Guy Pearce. That's the connection between the two films, and nothing more."
Nothing more apart from the Space Jockeys.
So what's Peter's relationship to Charles Bishop?** AvP** took place in 2004, where Weyland was already up-and-running as a multi-billion dollar industry. If Peter Weyland is just "an entrepreneur" in Prometheus, does that suggest the early days of the company, far in the future? Are we ignoring and contradicting AvP? Would we be absolutely OK with that? Discuss below.
Prometheus, as you'll be well aware, stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Charlize Theron and Logan Marshall Green, and is out on June 8.