Alien 5 put ‘on hold’

The past year has been a turbulent time for fans of one of cinema’s most beloved franchises, the Alien series. A few months back, we learned that District 9 director Neill Blomkamp would be helming a fifth Alien film (tentatively titled Alien 5), before learning that Ridley Scott’s long-planned follow-up to Prometheus was actually starting to snowball, with the director revealing the title to be Alien: Paradise Lost.

This, naturally, would provide potential confusion to cinemagoers: two Alien movies, getting released very close to one another, with one set in the past of the franchise and one in its future? Head-scratching stuff. So of course, Alien: Paradise Lost would be holding it back – and now it appears to have won this particular tug of war. Neill Blomkamp stated on his twitter:

alien is kinda holding/ pending prometheus 2. So I shall be working on other things… as much as I love the xeno- and Lt ripley

— Neill Blomkamp (@NeillBlomkamp) October 30, 2015

Of course, we don’t believe this ‘on hold’ business means forever. After all, the studio green-lit Blomkamp’s vision for a fifth Alien movie, when he shared concept art on social media, because people wanted to see this film. That’s something that shouldn’t change with time.