Ridley Scott Talks Alien Prequel

Fresh from dusting off the bracken and pulling out rogue arrows from Robin Hood, Ridley Scott is turning his attention to the two-part Alien prequel.

The project has been germinating since that xeno-baby first popped jauntily out of John Hurt's chest back in 1979 and with Lost co-creator Damon Lindoff close to turning in a script and casting announcements presumably not too far off, Scott's vision for the Alien origin story(s) is coming together nicely.

"The film will be really tough, really nasty," he tells The Independent of the 3D two-parter. "It's the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?"

Hmm... intriguing, if suitably vague, stuff. The notion that the death-dealing xenomorphs are as much an instrument of a higher power as, say, the colonial marines has been part of the Alien mythology for years and seems a logical direction to take the prequels.

No mention of space jockeys yet but some friendly banter for his successor on the franchise. "Jim's raised the bar and I've got to jump to it," he says. "He's not going to get away with it." Mr Cameron, consider yourself warned