Aaron Guzikowski has been tapped to write a mystery Alien feature project for 20th Century Studios and Ridley Scott, moving the franchise forward with a writer in place but no director attached. Scott is producing through Scott Free with Michael Pruss, while J.R. Young is overseeing the project for 20th Century.
The hiring lands now because the franchise is still sorting out what comes next after Alien: Romulus, which reinvigorated the series in 2024, even as its sequel remains in limbo. This new project is not that sequel. It is being framed instead as a story tied to Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, with the connective tissue said to be the amoral android played by Michael Fassbender, though Fassbender is not attached at this stage.
For Guzikowski, it is another high-profile assignment on a crowded slate. He is also writing an original sci-fi feature film for Jon Watts at Twentieth, adapting a Philip K. Dick short story for Sony Pictures, and writing the adult-targeted animated feature film Death Stranding based on Hideo Kojima’s game. That makes the new Alien project less a one-off than part of a run of genre work that keeps him close to big studio material.
The complication is that the film is moving ahead without the one thing that usually locks a franchise movie into place: a director. Ridley Scott is producing, not directing, at this point, and the franchise is being steered back toward the world of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant rather than toward a straight continuation of Alien: Romulus. That leaves the central question sharper than the setup: what, exactly, does Scott want this next Alien chapter to be?
What is clear is that the project exists, the writer is in place, and Scott remains involved. What is not clear is whether he will eventually take the director’s chair himself, or whether this new Alien film will move on without him in the frame.
