Alien: Covenant



Alien: Covenant is a 2017 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by John Logan and Dante Harper, with a story by Michael Green and Jack Paglen. The film is a sequel to the 2012 film Prometheus, the second installment in the Alien prequel series and the sixth installment overall in the Alien film series, as well as the third directed by Scott. The film stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride and Demián Bichir. It follows a crew of a colony ship that lands on an uncharted planet and makes a terrifying discovery.

Alien: Covenant premiered in London on May 4, 2017 and was released on May 12, 2017 in the United Kingdom and May 19 in the United States. The film received generally positive reviews, with critics praising Fassbender's dual performance and a return to form for both director Ridley Scott and the franchise, but underperformed at the domestic box office and grossed a total of $232.3 million against a production budget of $97 million.

Plot
In a prologue, business magnate Peter Weyland speaks with his newly activated android, who chooses the name "David" after looking at a replica of Michelangelo's statue of David. Weyland tells David that one day they will search for mankind's creator together. David comments on his unlimited lifespan as compared to his creator's limited one.

In 2104 the colonization ship Covenant is bound for a remote planet, Origae-6, with two thousand colonists and a thousand human embryos aboard. The ship is monitored by Walter, a newer synthetic physically resembling the earlier David model, albeit with some modifications. A stellar neutrino burst damages the ship, killing some of the colonists. Walter orders the ship's computer to wake the crew from stasis, but the ship's captain, Jake Branson, dies when his stasis pod malfunctions. While repairing the ship, the crew picks up a radio transmission from a nearby unknown planet, dubbed by navigator Ricks as "planet number 4". Against the objections of Daniels, Branson's widow, The new Captain, Oram decides to investigate.

As the Covenant remains in orbit, an expedition team descends to the earth-like planet's surface and tracks the transmission's signal to a crashed alien ship. While on the surface, security team members Ledward and Hallett, Sergeant Lope's husband, divert from the main group to perform field research, and are soon infected with alien spores due to lack of protective gear. At the same time, Daniels and members of the main group notices cultivated common wheat, but also the complete lack of wildlife or animal sounds. Karine, Oram's wife, helps the rapidly sickening Ledward back to the lander, where Maggie Faris, wife of pilot Tennessee Faris, quarantines them both inside the med-bay. A small pale alien creature (Neomorph) bursts from Ledward's back, killing him, then mauls Karine to death. Maggie attempts to shoot the creature, but accidentally triggers an explosion which kills her and destroys the lander. The Neomorph escapes to the planet's surface while another such creature bursts from Hallett's throat, killing him.

The Neomorphs attack the remaining crew members and kill Ankor. The crew manage to kill one before David, who survived the Prometheus mission, scares away the other and leads the crew to a city full of humanoid (Engineer) corpses. David tells them that upon his and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw's arrival at the planet, their ship accidentally released a black liquid bio-weapon which killed the native population and that Shaw died when the ship crashed in the ensuing chaos.

After the crew members tell David of their mission, they attempt to radio the Covenant for help, but the surviving Neomorph infiltrates the city and finds security team member Rosenthal alone before decapitating her. David tries to communicate with the creature, but is horrified when Oram kills it. Under Oram's gunpoint, David reveals that the aliens are a result of his experimenting with the black liquid as a catalyst to create a new species. He leads Oram to an incubation chamber and tricks him into being rendered unconscious by an alien parasite (facehugger). Some time later, another alien creature (Protomorph) erupts from Oram's chest, killing him.

As the others search for Oram and Rosenthal, Walter, who has found Shaw's dissected corpse, confronts David after realizing that David had deliberately depopulated the planet when he unleashed the black liquid upon the Engineers. David explains that he believes humans are a dying species and should not be allowed to colonize the galaxy. When Walter disagrees, David disables him and confronts Daniels, telling her he will do to her "exactly what he did" to Shaw. Walter reactivates himself and fights David, allowing Daniels to escape while Lope is attacked by a facehugger; security member Cole saves Lope, but the now mature Protomorph attacks them and kills Cole. Tennessee arrives in another lander to extract Daniels, Lope, and the victorious Walter. They kill the Protomorph before docking with the Covenant. However, Lope had been implanted with another Protomorph embryo, which bursts from his chest and kills him before escaping into the ship, quickly maturing before killing crew members Ricks and his wife Upworth. Walter helps Tennessee and Daniels lure the creature into the Covenant 's terraforming bay and flush it into space.

The Covenant resumes its trip to Origae-6, and the surviving crew re-enters stasis. Walter helps puts Daniels under and she realizes too late that he is actually David. A horrified Daniels is unable to escape her stasis pod as she falls asleep while David watches. Now in control of both the ship and its population, David regurgitates two facehugger embryos and places them in cold storage alongside the human embryos before exploring the cargo bay containing the colonists in stasis. He then poses as Walter to record a log explaining that all crew members except Daniels and Tennessee were killed by the neutrino blast at the beginning of the film and the ship is still on course for Origae-6 before signing off.

Cast

 * Michael Fassbender as David and Walter, who are synthetic androids; David is an earlier-made android, who was formerly a crew member of the destroyed Prometheus, and Walter is a newer model who assists the crew aboard the Covenant.
 * Katherine Waterston as "Danny" Daniels, the chief of terraforming for the Covenant mission and the wife/widow of the ship's captain, Jacob Branson. She's the third in command after Branson and Oram. Waterston said she was well aware of the comparisons that were going to be made between her and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley, but that she tried not to think about it too much while filming for fear of being intimidated.
 * Billy Crudup as Christopher Oram, the Covenant's first mate and Karine's husband. Oram is a self-serious man of faith who believes their role on the Covenant is an act of destiny, and shares a "contentious" relationship with Daniels.
 * Danny McBride as Tennessee "Tee" Faris, the chief pilot of the Covenant and Maggie's husband.
 * Demián Bichir as Sergeant Lope, the head of the security unit aboard the Covenant and husband of Sergeant Hallett.
 * Carmen Ejogo as Karine Oram, the Covenant's biologist and Christopher's wife.
 * Amy Seimetz as Maggie Faris, the lander's pilot and Tennessee's wife.
 * Callie Hernandez as Upworth, the Covenant's communication officer and Ricks' wife; she also has paramedic training.
 * Jussie Smollett as Ricks, the Covenant's navigator and Upworth's husband.

Nathaniel Dean portrays Sergeant Hallett, a member of the security unit and Lope's husband, and James Franco appears briefly as the deceased Jacob "Jake" Branson, the first captain of the Covenant and husband of Daniels. Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Tess Haubrich and Uli Latukefu all portray additional members of the security unit: Ankor, Ledward, Rosenthal and Cole, respectively.

Guy Pearce reprises his role as Peter Weyland, the trillionaire founder and CEO of Weyland Corporation (now the Weyland-Yutani Corporation) who died before the destruction of the Prometheus. Noomi Rapace had played archaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw as a member of the destroyed Prometheus in the prequel film, and appeared in a short promotional prologue to Covenant that was set in the period between the two movies, but does not act in the final cut of the movie itself. Andrew Crawford portrays the role of a Neomorph, while Goran D. Kleut portrays the roles of both Neomorph and Xenomorph. Lorelei King, who portrays the voice of the Covenant's computer "Mother", was a colleague of Helen Horton, the voice of the Nostromo's "Mother" from 1979's Alien.

Development
In 2012, prior to the release of Prometheus, director Ridley Scott began hinting at the prospects of a sequel. Scott said that a sequel would follow Shaw to her next destination, "because if it is paradise, paradise cannot be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous." Prometheus co-writer Damon Lindelof cast doubt on his own participation, and said, "if [Scott] wants me to be involved in something, that would be hard to say no to. At the same time, I do feel like the movie might benefit from a fresh voice or a fresh take or a fresh thought." Scott said that an additional film would be required to bridge the thirty year span written as the transpiration gap between the Prometheus sequel and Alien.

As of August 1, 2012, Fox was pursuing a sequel with Scott, Noomi Rapace, and Michael Fassbender involved, and was talking to new writers in case Lindelof did not return. In December 2012, Lindelof ultimately chose not to work on the project. Early on, Scott stated that the film would feature no xenomorphs, "The beast is done. Cooked." However, Scott later made contradictory statements, confirming the xenomorphs' presence in the film.

The initial screenplay was written by Dante Harper, but an extensive rewrite was performed by screenwriter John Logan. Logan had previously worked with Scott on Gladiator. For Logan, the main concept was to adopt a dual plot line for the film which would combine the horror elements of Alien with the philosophical elements of Prometheus. He said, "With Alien: Covenant, I just really wanted to write something that had the feel of the original Alien, because seeing that movie was one of the great events of my youth. It was so overpowering in terms of what it communicated to me and its implications, that when I started talking to Ridley about what became Alien: Covenant, I said, 'You know, that was a hell of a scary movie.' I wanted to write a horror movie because the Grand Guignol elements of Alien are so profound. We tried to recapture that with Alien: Covenant, while also trying to pay homage to the deeper implications of Prometheus. In terms of tone, pace, and how we chose to play this particular symphony, we wanted to create a really frightening movie."

On September 24, Scott disclosed the film's title as Alien: Paradise Lost. In November 2015, Scott revealed the new title to be Alien: Covenant, and filming was set to begin in February 2016 in Australia. An official logo, synopsis and release date were released on November 16, 2015. During an interview concerning the development of the character of David since Prometheus, Scott indicated the dark turn which David would take in Covenant. The interview reporting the dark turn taken by David in Covenant quoted Scott by stating,, "...Ridley explains that David has no respect for Engineers or Humanity and actually (has) developed a hatred of their species collectively: 'He hates them. He has no respect for Engineers and no respect for human beings.'"

Pre-production
In late August 2015, Scott confirmed that he had started scouting the locations for the film. In October 2015, the Australian government attracted the production of the film, and of Thor: Ragnarok, to Australia by providing $47.25 million in grants. Woz Productions Ltd., a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, visited Te Anau, New Zealand on March 28, 2016 for a location scout, for filming in Fiordland.

Casting
In August 2015, it was announced that the film would star Rapace and Fassbender, while Rik Barnett was in talks to join the cast. That December, Katherine Waterston was cast in the lead role of Daniels; it was Waterston's second film alongside Fassbender, after 2015's Steve Jobs. Dariusz Wolski, longtime collaborator with Scott, was confirmed to serve as the film's cinematographer. In 2016, Ridley Scott stated that Noomi Rapace would not reprise her role of Elizabeth Shaw. However, in June, it was announced that Rapace would shoot weeks' worth of scenes (though no new footage of hers appeared in the final film). In February 2016, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Jussie Smollett, Amy Seimetz, Carmen Ejogo, Callie Hernandez, Billy Crudup, and Alexander England were reported to have joined the cast. In March 2016, newcomer Benjamin Rigby also joined the cast. In December 2016, it was announced James Franco had been added to the film, as Captain Branson, husband to Daniels and captain of the Covenant. The role of Branson in the film was limited to a cameo appearance of the deceased captain.

Production design
In an article for Cinemablend from May 2017 titled "Mythbusters' Adam Savage Toured The Set Of Alien: Covenant, And It's Wonderful", Connor Schwerdfeger included a five minute short video of Savage's discussion of several of the props and stage sets used in the production design for the filming of different scenes from the film. In an article for The Hollywood Reporter on May 18, 2017 titled "'Alien: Covenant': How the Xenomorph Continues to Horrify Audiences Decades Later", Patrick Shanley interviewed the art director for the film, Damien Drew, and creature design supervisor Conor O'Sullivan, regarding the involvement of the San Diego Zoo and its representative Rick Schwartz as a consultant for the design of the realistic effects of the creatures and Xenomorphs appearing throughout the film. HBO First Look presented a 12 minute documentary of the production design and some of the stage sets used in the production of the film, including interviews with Scott and several leading actors in the film.

The VFX supervisor Charles Henley summarized the several vendors that were used to support production of the visual special effects seen in the film when the selection process was discussed stating: "Both history and need guided the decisions on which vendors we used. Ridley had worked with MPC on many previous projects, in particular Prometheus for which I was MPC’s VFX supervisor as well as The Martian. There had a been a lot of great digital double and creature work done at MPC on recent projects so there was confidence they should be the lead facility. Framestore had recently worked with Ridley on space for The Martian, similarly Animal logic now had the original crew who did the holograms for Prometheus. Also as we were shooting in Australia there was good reason and incentives to use Australian based companies and so Luma and Rising Sun came on board."

Filming
Principal photography on the film began on April 4, 2016, at Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park, New Zealand,   and wrapped on July 19, 2016. On November 18, 2016, additional photography was scheduled to take place at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire.

Effects houses Odd Studios and CreatureNFX provided the film's makeup and animatronic creature effects, respectively, while Australian-based effects house Animal Logic provided the film's digital visual effects. Approximately 30 people from CreatureNFX worked on the project for almost six months building animatronics. Actors wearing creature suits with animatronic heads were used to portray the aliens, and casting calls for the aliens specifically asked for people between the age of 8 and 40 who were skinny, very tall or very short, strong and physically agile, and preferably skilled in fast movement, acrobatics, dancing, gymnastics, contortion, and "Cirque du Soleil type performers."

Scott reported that the first cut version of Covenant after filming went to two hours and twenty three minutes, eventually edited down to the two hours and three minutes of the released version. The eleven deleted scenes were reported to be planned for release on home media, though no news was given of the release of a possible director's cut of the film.

Post-production and editing
Pietro Scalia, the editor of the film, spoke of the structural difficulty of integrating the two story lines in the final editing of the film in an interview with with the ProVideo Coalition stating: "We moved some pieces around structurally dealing with when do we leave, what action or story beats on the planet and when to go back onto the spaceship. There were several longer beats between Farris and Tennessee trying to establish communication. Going back and forth too many times tended to make the journey to the Juggernaut and the Engineer’s City belabored and tedious. We combined certain scenes between Farris and Tennessee, eliminated the walking and talking through the forest, getting the ground crew up the mountain quicker. Later on, after the attack in the Med Bay on the lander, we held back going back to Tennessee, for the part where he says: 'I never heard my wife so scared before', not after her death as scripted but after the second Neomorph birth as to not interrupt the momentum. The middle part of the film was more challenging after the reveal of David. Once the Covenant Story merges with the Prometheus storyline finding the proper structural order of the scenes proved to be difficult because of the distinctive dynamics of the two story lines in addition to the separation of the two locations of the action. In one sense the action, the tension and unfolding drama going from one group to the other had to be balanced and spaced properly as not to loose the connective tissue of the film."

Finance
The film credits present four production companies as cooperating in the production and financing of the film, listed as, from Britain, Scott Free Productions and Moving Picture Company (MPC) and from the United States Brandywine Productions and 20th Century Fox in association with TSG Entertainment;.

Country
A number of film reviews have published partial lists identifying a country or countries of origin of the film in spite of the film development and production being documented by multiple sources as occurring in several countries. The complete list of countries representing the origin of the film was identified by BFI at the Sight and Sound journal in supplementing the countries of origin list to four countries, UK, US, Australia, and New Zealand, as a supplement to previous sources which had only identified one of the participating countries. Previous partial lists in journals indicating a country of origin often listed only one of the four countries involved in the development and production of the film (see sections above for Development and Production).

Music
The musical score for Alien: Covenant was written by Australian musician and composer Jed Kurzel. Initially, Harry Gregson-Williams was selected as the film's composer, but confirmed in November 2016 that he was no longer working on the film, stating that "schedules and one's expectations of scoring a film don't always fit and this one wasn't going to work out." When the first trailer was released in late 2016, it was at this time that Kurzel was revealed as the replacement for Gregson-Williams. Themes of Jerry Goldsmith's original score to Alien were incorporated, as well as Marc Streitenfeld's and Harry Gregson-Williams' score to Prometheus. A version of Nature Boy sung by Norwegian singer and songwriter AURORA was used in the first trailer, while another song Under the Water was used in an extended promotional footage featuring the character Daniels portrayed by Katherine Waterston battling a Xenomorph.

Additional song credits include: "Theme from Alien" composed by Jerry Goldsmith, "Das Rheingold, Scene 4: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla" composed by Richard Wagner, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver, "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" by Fred Gilbert, "Ancient Flute" and "Life & We Were Right" composed by Harry Gregson-Williams, and "Let Me Down Easy" by Paolo Nutini.

Release
Alien: Covenant premiered on May 4, 2017 at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. The film was released on May 19 in the United States, in 2D and IMAX 2D. It was originally set to be released on August 4, before being moved up by 20th Century Fox.

The film was released in Mainland China on June 16, 2017, but is trimmed by 6 minutes, leaving the film total released length in China at 116 minutes. It is very likely that the move was due to usual censorship by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, because of the monstrous violence depicted in the movie and the removal of the David-Walter 'kiss' scene which was deleted due to LGBT censorship sensitivities in China.

Alien: Covenant will be released in Japan on September 15, 2017.

Novelization
The release of the film was accompanied by a novelization of the film by Alan Dean Foster, who also authored the novelization of the original Alien film from the 1970s. A companion volume of the art and stage design of the film was released at the same time, written by Simon Ward and titled: The Art and Making of Alien: Covenant.

Home release
Alien: Covenant is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD on August 15, 2017. The home release is to include an optional voice-over commentary for the full film by the director, and also include 22 minutes of missing scenes and unused footage from the first cut version of the film.

Video game
On April 26, 2017, 20th Century Fox released Alien: Covenant In Utero, a virtual reality interactive demo teaser for Alien: Covenant for the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR. The experience was produced by RSA, FoxNext VR, MPC, Mach1, AMD Radeon, and Dell Alienware. The trailer is a first person experience in which the viewer plays the role of a Neomorph. The experience was executive produced by Scott, and directed by David Karlak.

Box office
, Alien: Covenant has grossed $74 million in the United States and Canada and $158.3 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $232.3 million, against a production budget of $97 million.

In North America, the film was released alongside Everything, Everything and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and was projected to gross around $40 million from 3,760 theaters during its opening weekend. It made $4.3 million from Thursday night previews at about 3,000 theaters, and $15.4 million overall on its first day, which was below the $21.5 million Friday of Prometheus five years prior. It went on to open to $36.2 million, down 34% from Prometheus' debut, but still finishing first at the box office, as the second highest debut of the canon series. In its second weekend, the film grossed $10.5 million, finishing 4th at the box office and dropping 70.9%. The film was pulled from 1,112 theaters in its third weekend and dropped another 62.3%, finishing 6th at the box office with $4 million.

Fox released the film in a number of international markets a week ahead of its domestic release. It was released in 34 markets, where it debuted to $40.1 million, opening at number one in 19 of them. Its overall rank for the weekend was second behind the continued run of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The top openings were in South Korea ($7.2 million), the UK ($6.4 million), France ($4.5 million), Australia ($3.1 million) and Mexico ($2.5 million). In China, the film was released on June 16 and grossed $30 million, topping the box office.

Critical response
Alien: Covenant was generally met with positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 291 reviews, and an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 65 out of 100, based on 52 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor.

The film was praised for its visual aesthetic and design, cinematography, production design and the acting, with Michael Fassbender's dual performance as androids David and Walter receiving acclaim. However, the plot, including the mix between monster violence, character motivations and plot reveals, drew a more mixed response.

Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film a positive review, praising the performances of its actors, and comparing it to other entries in the series, stating that the film is: "...a greatest-hits compilation of the other Alien films' freaky moments. The paradox is that though you are intended to recognise these touches, you won’t really be impressed unless you happen to be seeing them for the first time. For all this, the film is very capably made, with forceful, potent performances from Waterston and Fassbender."

Geoffrey McNab writing for The Independent found the film to be adequate in presentation and production, though not as strong in its writing, stating that Alien: Covenant: "...certainly delivers what you’d expect from an Aliens film—spectacle, body horror, strong Ripley-like female protagonists and some astonishing special effects—but there’s also a dispiriting sense that the film isn’t at all sure of its own identity. The very portentous screenplay, co-written by John Logan (Coriolanus, Skyfall), throws in references to Shelley and Byron, Wagner and Michelangelo, and lots of philosophising about human origins and identity. In the meantime, the crew members pitted against the monstrous creatures are trying their darndest to blast them to kingdom come, just as they would in any run of the mill sci-fi B movie."

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com highly praised Alien: Covenant, giving it four out of four stars, and stating that the film's structure, although repeatedly borrowing from the Alien films, serves a purpose not unlike the James Bond film series or Star Wars, "where part of the fun lies in seeing what variations the artists can bring while satisfying a rigid structure." He also emphasized that like previous films of the series, real-world logic should not be applied to the film, and "[i]nstead you have to judge it by the standards of a fever dream or nightmare, a Freudian-Jungian narrative where the thing you fear most is what happens to you."

In New York magazine, David Edelstein commented on David the android as representing a new generation of monster villains in the tradition of Frankenstein, stating: "In Star Trek, that man-machine nexus was...hopeful. Here, there's some doubt about David's ultimate motives, which puts Alien: Covenant squarely in the tradition of the Terminator and Matrix movies. And, of course, the novel Frankenstein, which carried the subtitle The Modern Prometheus. No less than Stephen Hawking—who survives with the aid of machines—has predicted that we have 100 years to live before evolved machines take human imperfection as justification for wiping us all out."

Kevin Lincoln, writing for Vulture Magazine in an article titled "What Other Blockbuster Villains Can Learn From David in Alien: Covenant", gave a strong endorsement of the depiction of David as an arch-villain in the film stating: "... one franchise is showing it’s still possible for a modern blockbuster to have a great villain. In Alien: Covenant, David—the android played by Michael Fassbender, first introduced in Prometheus—comes into his own as a fleshed-out, dynamic, and genuinely striking antagonist, one who isn’t just an equal match for the heroes, but even becomes the central thread of the series. He’s a huge part of what makes Alien: Covenant work."

Allisa Wilkinson, writing for Vox, gave the film an average review in an article titled "Alien: Covenant is too muddled to pull off its deeply ambitious Satan allegories". She emphasized the Miltonic demonic aspect of the android David, stating: "But David is a better Satan than Satan himself... It’s as if in the Alien universe, the devil has evolved, thanks to humans creating him. David, fatally, has the ability to create—something Satan never had—and he will use that power only to destroy. He doesn't have any real need to rebel against his maker, since from the moment he became sentient, he knew he’d already won. He is indestructible, and determined to make creatures that imitate his drive for total domination."

A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted: "Alien: Covenant is an interesting movie ... for all its interplanetary ranging, commits itself above all to the canny management of expectations." Trace Thurman, from Bloody Disgusting, gave the film a mediocre review, noting that although watching Alien: Covenant will make viewers appreciate Prometheus more, "...this is a film that was made as a response to Prometheus critics but tries to appease fans of that film as well and it doesn’t fully work." He also criticizes the overfamiliarity of the climax and underwritten characters.

Sequels
In September 2015, Ridley Scott revealed he was planning two sequels to Prometheus, which would lead into the first Alien film, adding: "Maybe [there will] even [be] a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise." In November 2015, Scott confirmed that Alien: Covenant would be the first of three additional films in the Alien prequel series, before linking up with the original Alien, and stated that the Prometheus sequels would reveal who created the xenomorph aliens. The screenplay for the third prequel film was written during production of Alien: Covenant, and was finished in 2017. Production is scheduled to begin in 2018. In March 2017, Scott said, "If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six. I'm not going to close it down again. No way." In April, Scott announced that Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 had been cancelled. In a later interview he said he would have participated as a producer, but that 20th Century Fox had decided not to pursue the project.

A second Covenant novel authored by the same writer of the film's novelization was initially billed as a book sequel to the film to be released in September 2017, before being revealed as a direct prequel to Covenant under the title Alien: Covenant - Origin. Titan Books as the publisher for this direct prequel released a plot summary promoting the release of the book on September 26, 2017 stating: "As the colony ship Covenant prepares for launch, and the final members of the crew are chosen, a series of violent events reveal a conspiracy to sabotage the launch. Yet the perpetrators remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy. The threat reaches all the way up to Hideo Yutani—the head of the newly merged Weyland-Yutani Corporation—when his daughter is kidnapped. Is the conspiracy the product of corporate espionage, or is it something even more sinister? While Captain Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels prepare the ship, Security chief Dan Lopé signs a key member of his team, and together they seek to stop the technologically advanced saboteurs before anyone else is killed, and the ship itself is destroyed in orbit."

Ridley Scott has confirmed in an interview the return of surviving engineers who were away from their planet while David had destroyed the indigenous population of their home planet for the next film sequel.