Even as he finishes Exodus: Gods And Kings and dives deep into pre-production on** The Martian**, Ridley Scott can’t get away from questions about his two most anticipated upcoming projects, the sequels to Prometheus and Blade Runner. Talking with Yahoo about the former, he has confirmed his intention to keep recognizable toothy Xenomorphs out of this stage of the Alien story.
“The beast is done. Cooked,” he says. “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.”
Prometheus 2, or whatever it ends up being called, is still at the scripting stage, having been through about 15 drafts already. As for what it’ll actually feature, expect more from Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw and Michael Fassbender’s droid David, who ended the first film sans noggin.
Speaking of droids, or rather replicants, Scott is still pushing ahead with development of **Blade Runner 2, **and even met Harrison Ford in London the day before the actor’s on-set accident making **Star Wars: Episode VII **to discuss it.
“It’s on the charts,” says the director. “I can’t say when that would be yet, because of Ford’s thing with Star Wars. It’s a sequel – it’s what happens next. It’s quite surprisingly clever.”
The Martian, meanwhile, starts shooting in November, and Exodus: Gods And Kings will arrive in the UK on December 26.