Ridley Scott says he was never offered to direct Alien and Blade Runner sequels

“I had little choice. My partners were very tough in business. I discovered the ruthless world of Hollywood.”

Vanity Fair revealed yesterday the first images of Gladiator IIaccompanied by comments from part of the team: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Connie Nielsen reveal the outlines of this sequel, 24 years after the huge success of the peplum of Ridley Scott. Precisely, the director is particularly talkative there, and not only about Gladiator…

During this presentation of the blockbuster, the trailer of which will be released next week, the 86-year-old filmmaker looks back on two of his biggest successes, Alien And Blade Runner. After explaining that he had to choose between staging Covenant and 2049recently, he clarified that after the success of these two SF films at the turn of the 1970s-1980s, he was unable to direct the sequels himself. For the simple reason that he was not in a position of strength with respect to his producers… who would not even have offered him a repeat! Here are his words.

Ridley Scott: “With Covenant, we’re trying to give the recipe for Alien, for those who come after”

“I was a little slow to start, he confides first. I should have done the sequels ofAlien and of Blade Runner. What do you want? With age, we evolve. At the time, I didn’t want to immerse myself in these films again, and that’s why, for Alienit was James Cameron, then David Fincher, who took on the task.”

“I created two franchises, he continues. In Hollywood, most directors, at least those of my level, are inflexible on these kinds of issues. But, Alien was only my second film and Blade Runner my third. And I didn’t have much choice. My partners were very tough in business. I discovered the cutthroat world of Hollywood. In the 1980s, the possibility of making sequels simply did not exist. I was never warned or asked. You can imagine that I was not particularly thrilled.”

It was not until the early 2010s that Ridley Scott had the opportunity to return to the helm of his two cult franchises. He would have liked to shoot the sequel to Blade Runner as early as 2012, but it was finally staged by Denis Villeneuve five years later. “I regretted it a lot, even though he did a great job”comments Scott, still with Vanity Fair. Although he was executive producer of this sequel, without shooting it himself, he did however sign two opuses ofAlien those years: the prequels Prometheus And Covenant. Which were not as well received as The Eighth Passenger…

To go back to Gladiator IIhe will have once again waited several decades. 24 years between two opuses of the same story, it’s long, and quite rare in Hollywood. Except that this time, no filmmaker has shot a sequel or a prequel before he himself signed up again. “For Ridley Scott, Gladiator II has a very special meaning”the magazine emphasizes.

The film will be released in theaters on November 13, 2024.

Alien Covenant: Ridley Scott’s Art Lesson (review)