10 Biggest Missed Opportunities In Horror Movie History

4. Neill Blomkamp's Alien: Awakening

In early 2015, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp revealed that he had been developing a direct sequel to Aliens called Alien: Awakening, which would ignore the events of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, allowing Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), and Newt (Carrie Henn) to return from the dead.

Blomkamp got as far as completing the script, which Weaver called "so amazing," and original Alien director Ridley Scott even came aboard to produce.

However by late 2015, Awakening had been shelved as Fox decided to instead proceed with Scott's Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant, and in 2017 Scott confirmed that Blomkamp's film had indeed been cancelled.

Fans were irate, especially in the face of the polarising reception to both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, that a direct sequel to the original two Alien movies was shot down.

Even with Blomkamp's wildly uneven filmmaking career post-District 9, his take on Alien would've probably been more interesting than the rather middling trio of Alien movies we've had over the last 15 years.