3 Major Things We Learnt From The First Alien: Covenant Image
Big things have small beginnings.
Forget all that bloody chatter about Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 recently, with concept art for an adult Newt and Signourney Weaver saying she's still excited for it. I stand by what I said last year about the revisionist sequel's hopes and, as the project is frozen until Ridley Scott's done with his massive Alien prequel enterprise, anybody excited by scraps of vague concept art are going to waiting for a while.
Speaking of Scott's return to the world of the xenomorph's, we've just got the first image from the set of Alien: Covenant, showing the arm of one of the spacesuits from the titular mission. Released to coincide with Alien Day (26th April is 4/26 in American date convention, which is similar to LV-426 - yes, it's more contrived than May 4th being Star Wars Day), on the face of it it's not much.
However, looking a bit deeper there's actually a few little clues about where Scott's taking the Prometheus world and tying it more into the original film. Let's break it down.
3. Weyland Has Teamed Up With Yutani
The logo for the Covenant trip identifies it as a Weyland-Yutani expedition, a major leap towards the the original film's status quo.
In Prometheus, the eponymous ship was a Weyland Corporation solo project, meaning that Guy Pearce's make-upped old CEO had yet to merge with Yutani to creature the evil company obsessed with experimenting on a perfect organism.
We don't know when Covenant is set, but as Prometheus was in 2093 and Alien 2121, I'd say this development places it at the very least 2100 or later. Which totally works - as Michael Fassbender's David is the only returning character, there's really no need to worry about ageing characters (unless Noomi Rapace is actualy returning).