‘Lost’ co-creator Damon Lindelof has turned in his re-write of Jon Spaihts’ first draft screenplay for Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien‘ prequel, and the early word from insiders at 20th Century Fox is one of sheer excitement.

According to Vulture, they love Lindelof’s draft which carries ‘no expensive set pieces’ and could pass as a PG-13;

“The thinking,” explains one insider, “is that if the original Alien were released today, minus the F-bombs, you could still get a PG-13. Alien is a very Jaws-ian movie: There’s no sex, and while there’s lots of violence, most of it is off-camera. Maybe you’d have to cut away from certain scenes two seconds earlier, but it could be done.”

This means that Scott’s totally inflated $150 million+ suggested budget can be chopped down to something much more viable. Fox, whose ‘Avatar’ goldmine has saved their blushes this year after the flops of ‘Knight & Day’ and ‘The A-Team’ – are desperately looking for a 2012 tentpole and they are almost putting their whole chips into this one hand.

Three days ago I reported that Fox were interested in Noomi Rapace after a stealer audition from the ‘Tattoo’ star, but it’s said Fox/Scott are holding out for Natalie Portman. She has met with the execs to play the Colonial Marine general.

Knowing very little about the project at this point (we know it’s set 35 years before Sigourney Weaver and Nostromo landed on LV-426, it will explain the Space Jockey origin, it will be led by a female and that Scott after over three decades wants to return to the roots of being a small-scaled, horror/suspense story) it’s hard to give a detailed feeling of how I think this prequel will go down.

Generally, it’s hard for me to muster any interest in any prequel of any kind (you can chuck in ‘The Thing’ in that bracket) but then again, Scott was the man who started all this… so if anyone was to get my backing it would be him. Portman’s nod a bad call, either.

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