The Alien franchise is alive and well thanks to Alien: Romulus, which took in an impressive haul in its opening weekend at the box office, confirming that fans are just as invested in the series as they were since it first launched back in 1979. While the franchise has pivoted to comic books and video games to keep the excitement alive, Romulus marks the ninth live-action entry into the series, which includes two films that crossed over with the Predator franchise. Given that the series has jumped forward and backward in time over the years, Romulus director Fede Álvarez recently confirmed he’s already had some ideas of what he would want to explore in a follow-up, while James Cameron’s Aliens is chronologically the next chapter. Alien: Romulus is in theaters now.
WARNING: Spoilers below for Alien: Romulus
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The film follows Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and David Jonsson’s Andy attempting to leave their life on a mining colony behind, with those pursuits taking them to the Romulus/Remus space station, only for them and their crew to be attacked by monstrous beasts. Rain and Andy are the only two who survive the encounter, as the film concludes with them headed towards the planet Yvaga, leaving audiences to speculate if they make it safely and what life awaits them.
When asked by The Hollywood Reporter if he could pitch a sequel, Álvarezconfirmed, “Yes, I definitely can. We tend to do that naturally, not even thinking about sequels. For us, movies have not become franchises, tentpoles, and sequels. This is a language that I’ve only learned in the last ten years of my life working here. For me, it’s always been about story. So, once we finished, we started thinking, ‘What do you think happens when or if they get to your Yvaga? Is it going to be great? Or is it a terrible place?’ We tend to believe it’s probably a terrible place that they think is great and fantasize about, so we naturally started thinking about where it goes and what’s going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we go, ‘Oh, that sounds like a sequel.’”
Given that Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley ended Alien thinking she would be rescued in her cryochamber, only for it to take the better part of a century to be recovered in Aliens, and that Aliens similarly ended with cryosleep as Alien 3 opened with her shipmates not surviving the journey, a lot can happen in between two films.
While some franchises churn out multiple entries every decade, Álvarez emphasized that a Romulus sequel shoudn’t be rushed.
“We really try to think about it more in terms of story and if it needs another chapter and whether people want to know what happens next,” the director detailed. “So we’ll wait to see what people think and if people ask for it. My philosophy is that you should never make [a sequel] in two years. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to get the audience to really want it. If you think about Alien and Aliens, there’s seven years between them. But we definitely have ideas about where it should go.”
Alien: Romulus is in theaters now.
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