10 Horror Sequels Scrapped For INSANE Reasons
4. Fox Wanted To Make Alien: Covenant Instead - Alien: Awakening
Following the release of the polarising Alien prequel Prometheus, it was announced that the next film in the series would be Alien: Awakening - a direct sequel to James Cameron's Aliens, to be directed by District 9's Neill Blomkamp.
The film would ignore the events of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, in turn bringing Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), and Newt (Carrie Henn) back to life.
Blomkamp wrote a script, which Weaver called "so amazing," and original Alien director Ridley Scott even joined the project as a producer.
But the promising sequel hit a roadblock in late 2015, when Fox decided to shelve it in favour of Scott's sequel to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, which was ultimately released in 2017.
Given the divisive reception to Prometheus and considerable lack of faith among the fandom that a sequel would fare much better, there was far more excitement about Blomkamp's project.
And considering that Prometheus was a decent but hardly spectacular performer at the box office, it was the most predictable outcome imaginable that Covenant was both more polarising with fans and also underperformed commercially.
We'll sadly never know how a Weaver-starring, Blomkamp-directed Alien sequel would've fared, but it's easy to see how it had so much more promise than Covenant.
Considering that nostalgia-soaked legacy sequels were all the rage throughout the late 2010s, Fox was ludicrously short-sighted to kill this one in the crib.