Ridley Scott’s Third Alien Prequel Will Focus On David and the Dangers of AI

Alien director Ridley Scott is still keen to move forward with a third prequel film in the beloved sci-fi franchise. He began making the prequels in 2012 with Prometheus, which fans felt left many questions unresolved. Another movie that tried to answer some of them, Alien: Covenant, followed in 2017, but it underperformed for Fox, and the studio eventually moved away from Scott’s vision.

In a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, Scott suggested that a third film is still in the works, and noted that the plot would continue to revolve around David, the advanced AI android played by Michael Fassbender, who will be creating a “brave new world for himself,” adding, “AIs can go off. And if they do, it’s like a bomb.”

Though Scott doesn’t currently use AI himself, he seems thoughtful about the subject. “The uneasy question is: Can the AI only be as good as the information fed into it? If I say ‘Here’s a blank canvas, write me such and such,’ would that just be a melange of millions of other scripts? Probably. But the danger is it’ll pass that point and become smarter than we are.”

Scott created a ton of new lore in Prometheus and Covenant that aimed to explain who created the original Xenomorph and why. Prometheus introduced David as Peter Weyland’s tricky android servant. Accompanying Weyland on an expedition to LV-223, he became fascinated with the Engineers and their biological “black goo” substance. Eventually, he traveled to the Engineers’ homeworld and killed everyone, spending the rest of his time experimenting on the remaining life there as well as the archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace).

In Covenant, a new crew arrives on the planet and meets David, who escapes by posing as their identical-looking android, Walter. David puts the surviving humans in hypersleep and stores Alien embryos alongside them in an attempt to build a new species on Origae-6, a planet with a breathable atmosphere selected by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for colonization.

Little is known about Scott’s plans for the third prequel movie, but it sounds like it will continue to follow David’s story beyond the events of Covenant and toward the ultimate creation of the Xenomorph that appeared in the original Alien.

Following Covenant’s disappointing debut, the Alien franchise has moved on without Scott at the helm. Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus told a story set between the events of Alien and Aliens, while Noah Hawley’s TV series Alien: Earth is set two years before the events of Alien. Though Romulus was a success, a further film set in the Alien universe hasn’t yet materialized. However, a second season of Alien: Earth is currently in production in the U.K.

The post Ridley Scott’s Third Alien Prequel Will Focus On David and the Dangers of AI appeared first on Den of Geek.

Ridley Scott’s Third Alien Prequel Will Focus On David and the Dangers of AI

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