Several trade papers are reporting that Fox have given their backing to Neill Blomkamp to go ahead and start putting together his Alien movie. According to Blomkamp's own tweets, it's "officially" going to be his next film. The idea of a "green light" is a bit of a Hollywood myth, with most films just sort of carrying on until they're either stopped or, sometimes, actually get made, but if it refers to anything in particular it will be the moment that the execs sign off on actual production. This movie is not yet at that stage. First comes the writing of a screenplay and the contracting of the cast, just for starters. According to The Wrap, Ridley Scott will be a named producer on the film. He continues developing Prometheus 2 at the same time. Nobody knows where Blomkamp's film fits into the overall continuity but there are likenesses of Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn in his concept art Instagrams so this isn't likely to be any sort of prequel to Alien. I expect it's conceived as a sequel, the better to make sense of Weaver and Biehn's current ages, but even still, that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. I liked Blomkamp's Elysium a lot but it was very clearly not as popular as District 9. If Chappie ends up disappointing people too I can see a lot of the excitement being drained out of this Alien project. Chappie reaches cinemas in the UK and US on March 6th. Alien Whatever is still some time away, and Prometheus 2 might still beat it to the screen.