The screenplay for Ridley Scott’s sequel to science fiction thriller Prometheus has been completed, the British film-maker has told Empire magazine.
Scott, 75, said the script by Jack Paglen was finished and described his return to science fiction on the 2012 film as a “great experience”. “Prometheus 2 is written,” he said. “I have already got the next two films ready to go. That will be 2014, 2015.”
“I thought I’d left science-fiction for too long, that I had better climb back in. Prometheus was a great experience for me. Chasing number two, we can start evolving the grand idea.”
Prometheus, which starred Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba, centred on the human crew of a spaceship sent to investigate a distant planet where the answers to mankind’s origins may lie hidden. The film, written by Lost’s Damon Lindelof, is famous for answering almost none of the questions it initially posed and culminating with an open-ended finale which left plenty of room for a sequel. Complicating matters is the fact that the film exists within the same universe as Scott’s classic 1979 space slasher flick Alien.
Paglen is the writer of the the upcoming sci-fi thriller Transcendence. Scott’s next film is likely to be Moses tale Exodus, starring Christian Bale, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, Joel Edgerton and Ben Kingsley. His 2015 project could be either Prometheus 2 or (more likely) the previously announced The Forever War, yet another sci-fi project based on the 1974 Joe Halderon novel about a soldier who returns home from space to find his now-unrecognisable home planet has advanced many years into the future. Scott has also touted a big screen take on Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel Brave New World, though there has been little news about the project since 2008. He is still said to be planning a sequel to his iconic 1982 cold-hearted future vision, Blade Runner.
Michael Fassbender, who played android David in Prometheus, described the slow gestation process for the sequel as a positive thing. “You know, it takes time,” he said. “I don’t want them to rush it. I mean the reason that Pixar movies are so amazing is because they spend years throwing it out the window, re-jigging it, coming up with an idea, breaking it down, starting again, you know.
“So to make it correctly, I think it’s actually very encouraging. Because a lot of the times they’re like ‘we made some money let’s jump on the back of this. We wanna make more money again as soon as possible. [But] it’s nice to actually have a little bit of time to develop it.”
