Nothing special after huge expectations. Looks like there is no prequel / lead to Prometheus movie. We will see Engineers?

It will tie in with Prometheus but I just don't know to what degree. The trailer looks like a Prometheus 2 with bits and pieces from Aliens. Quite disappointment in what seems to be the movie: another ship, another crew, planet with aliens, people looking completely unprepared to what there is there etc. etc.

The problem with the trailer is that it's poorly put together. There's no idea nor structure to it, it's just all over the place. Of course that could all be intentional. A calculated attempt to try and appeal to both the lovers and the haters of 'Prometheus'. Also the style of song chosen for it, that slowed down, mellow cover version thing... it's a cliche already. Especially when compared with the brilliantly made 'Prometheus' trailer(s) it's very mediocre. But then the whole marketing campaign for 'Prometheus' was exceptionally well produced. But the fact that a trailer isn't very good doesn't mean a film can't be good (or vice versa).

An In-Depth Breakdown of the 'Alien: Covenant' Trailer
25 December 2016



Twentieth Century Fox spent the past week dropping one 'Alien: Covenant' still after another on us, all while teasing the forthcoming arrival of the 'Alien: Covenant' trailer. After six straight days of this, they finally revealed that the trailer would arrive on Christmas Day ... which is why some of us went to bed early last night: we wanted to be up bright and early to take in all that red-hot Xeno-on-doomed-human action.

Turned out, this was one final troll on behalf of the 'Alien: Covenant' marketing department: they dropped the trailer late last night, on Christmas Eve. Well-played, Twentieth Century Fox.

Anyway, now that we've had some time to absorb, let's take a closer look at the trailer. It's a good one.

The Full Story: Birth.Movies.Death.

'Alien: Covenant' Is Getting a VR Spin-Off
4 January 2017

Ridley Scott's sequel will offer a horrifying immersive experience on "major VR platforms".



When 'Alien: Covenant' opens in cinemas in May, brace yourself for the sci-fi horror to get in your face - almost literally so, as it will be launching with a virtual reality companion title.

Director Ridley Scott is working with the Fox Innovation Lab - an offshoot of Alien movie studio 20th Century Fox - to create what the team calls "a dread-inducing journey into the depths of the Alien universe."

Quite what form the finished product will take is still something of a mystery, though. The VR title is in development for "major VR platforms" and will be a paid release, so expect it to hit at least HTC Vive and Oculus Rift and hopefully be of greater scope than, say, a brief tour of the Covenant ship seen in the film. However, it's being referred to as a "virtual reality experience" rather than a game, so whether it arrives on the likes of PlayStation VR - or indeed, how interactive an experience it may be at all - is unclear.

Fox says, per Variety, "Viewers will discover the true meaning of terror as they navigate through horrifying alien environments and a story where every decision could mean the difference between life and death."

Whatever it is, the 'Alien: Covenant' VR experiment will be produced by Scott, and directed by David Karlak, best known for his meticulous effects work. The staffing of the project like a film does seem to imply that it may be a more narrative-driven experience.

Covenant won't be the first time the Alien franchise has dabbled in VR. Back in 2014, a proof-of-concept demo for developer Creative Assembly's excellent 'Alien: Isolation' running on Oculus Rift was playable at trade shows such as E3, though sadly an official release was never finalised. It is, however, possible to jury-rig the PC release of the first-person game to run through a VR headset, to approximate the immersive effect.

'Alien: Covenant' as a film picks up from the end of Prometheus, with the crew of the eponymous ship finding a seemingly idyllic planet populated only by Michael Fassbender's disturbing android David - last seen as a severed head. The movie will further explore the origins of the xenomorphs popularised in the classic Alien pictures, with familiar creatures such as facehuggers making a return.

The threats of old are also seemingly joined by terrifying new dangers, such as xeno-spores and - if the trailer is to be believed - a spine-burster broodling that makes the classic chest-burster look tame.

'Alien: Covenant' opens on May 19. A firm date for the VR experience has not been revealed.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/alien-covenant-vr-game

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi6qdjkz-Bo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKbljM4vS_w

Latest 'Alien: Covenant' Trailer Brings Fresh Fear
1 March 2017



Hot on the heels of the latest poster for 'Alien: Covenant' comes the new trailer for the movie. And, like a few recent examples, it includes a lot more footage of the terror we can expect lurking within, so if you're looking to avoid too many surprises being revealed, tread carefully.

Covenant finds the eponymous colony ship, crewed entirely by couples, headed for what all aboard are hoping will be a little slice of paradise. Or at least a habitable planet on which to set down some roots. But while they're initially puzzled as to why a seemingly alien world has wheat growing on it, the group soon has much bigger concerns on its mind... Such as how to avoid terrible, bloody death! See the universe, they said! You'll have fun, they said!

Ridley Scott's back behind the camera and he's brought 'Prometheus' Michael Fassbender with him to play both David and new android Walter. Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, Amy Seimetz, Demián Bichir, James Franco and Billy Crudup are among the humans Scott is terrorising this time around. 'Alien: Covenant' touches down on 12 May in the UK before heading to the US on 19 May.

http://www.empireonline.com/people/mich ... resh-fear/

'Alien: Covenant' Changes Everything We Know About Cinema’s Most Terrifying Monster
11 March 2017

Did I mention it looks scary as hell?



On the opening night of the SXSW film festival, Ridley Scott hosted a screening of his 1979 classic 'Alien' along with a special bonus: a preview of footage from the upcoming 'Alien: Covenant'. Normally, I don’t think there’s a ton of value in writing up preview footage, particularly in a review-style format. It’s always the best of the best, hand-picked to get people as hyped as possible, and let's face it: even the worst movie can have great moments.

The 20 terrifying minutes of 'Alien: Covenant' that screened warrants a bit more discussion, however. Made up of three discrete sequences, the footage covered what appear to be at least two pivotal moments in the film, along with a revelation that upends the entire Alien mythos as we’ve known it for the last 38 years. And did I mention that it was almost unbearably tense? Let's dig in, but first things first. Warning: minor spoilers ahead.

What's The Genre?

Sci-fi horror. More than any other mainstream franchise, the Alien films have always played genre ping-pong. Scott’s original film was a horror flick, James Cameron’s sequel turned it into an action franchise, and the various sequels have bounced back and forth ever since. (The conflict also marred Scott’s 2012 prequel Prometheus, which appeared to be a ponderous drama about the origins of humanity before turning into a horrorshow in its own right.)

But if the footage screened was any indication, the tone of 'Covenant' is full-on, breakneck horror, taking what the original film did and amping it up by a factor of 10. The footage starts with a drop ship sequence, as Daniels (Katherine Waterston), Christopher (Billy Crudup), and other members of their team leave their hulking mothership to explore a planet. (Michael Fassbender’s character from Prometheus — or at least an android that looks exactly like him — is also along for the ride.) It’s standard space adventure stuff, with the production design nicely melding the 70’s look of 'Alien' with the utilitarian ‘80s hardware of 'Aliens' to create an aesthetic combination that fits neatly with the most famous entries in the series. (The film is a sequel to Prometheus, so the events are taking place before the events of the 1979 original.)

But in the second sequence, Scott takes the gloves off. I don’t want to give away all the details here, but let’s just say that the landing party shown in the recent trailers ends up with two infected members, who then have alien creatures burst from their bodies in horrific, grisly ways that make the original 'Alien' chestbuster scene look like a Disney Channel movie. (I’m not being hyperbolic there; audience members moaned out loud during the screening.) Upstream Color’s Amy Seimetz plays a team member that tries to stop one of the newborn aliens in a taut sequence that is one of the most harrowing chases in Scott’s filmography. As you might imagine, things generally don’t go well — and half the team is left stranded on the planet with a wild alien newborn on the loose.

What's It About?

On the surface, 'Covenant' appears to be about a bunch of 'Alien'-esque space truckers that unwittingly come up against the most hostile natural force in the universe.

What's It Really About?

This is the most intriguing part of the preview footage, because the third scene shown changes the fundamental conflict behind the entire franchise. On its most basic level, the Alien series has always been about the conflict between humanity and nature. We may have the technology to explore the universe, but the alien creature — shark-like in its evolutionary perfection — is something we’re simply unable to handle. Accordingly, any attempts to harness it in the name of corporate gain (key plot points in both 'Alien' and 'Aliens') only result in carnage and loss of life.

That changes with 'Alien: Covenant'. In the final preview scene, Michael Fassbender’s android David (he’s definitely the same character from Prometheus in this scene, as he’s called David by name) walks Billy Crudup’s character through his personal workshop of biological terrors. He shows off different mutations of the creatures, explaining that he has been trying to understand the aliens that were discovered in Prometheus, going so far as to genetically engineer new versions — a process that’s been waiting for one final puzzle piece to complete.

That’s when David takes him into a small chamber filled with four eggs that look identical to the ones seen in the original 'Alien'. The final puzzle piece, David says, is "mother" — a waiting host — and Crudup’s character is lined up for the honor. The dots are easy to connect: the alien as audiences saw it in 1979 wasn’t the result of evolution or natural selection. Instead, it was the result of an android intentionally breeding the most dangerous, lethal creature possible.

Instead of being about humanity fighting the hostility of nature, the Alien series suddenly becomes something much more timely: a story about humanity sowing the seeds of its own demise, through a relentless pursuit of technology and artificial intelligence. Prometheus had poked around the edges of similar ideas, with the notion that humanity was the result of some sort of alien intervention, but the 'Covenant' footage makes it brutally clear that its our own creations that will destroy us. And according to Scott himself, it’s a theme that the film will explore in much deeper ways than simply tweaking some backstory. During a press event on Friday, Scott was asked if the film will tackle the question of humanity’s relevance in a world where AI and alien creatures can so easily overtake us, and his answer was blunt. "Always. [It’s a] big subject in this," he said. "I'm not going to say anymore until you guys see the fucking movie. It's right there; it's one of the big questions."

But Is It Any Good?

It is impossible to tell whether a movie as a whole will be good based on 20-ish minutes of footage. But what is clear is that those 20 minutes that screened were exciting, terrifying, and full of fascinating revelations. And perhaps more intriguing, nearly all of the footage shown in the film’s trailers was pulled from these three previewed scenes — meaning that there is a lot in 'Alien: Covenant' that audiences still have no idea about.

What Should It Be Rated?

So this one is going to be an "R." A hard "R". A hard "R" that will probably have a director’s cut Blu-ray that will be filled with so much extra blood and grisly gore that you’ll probably wish you could unsee it. But I’m just being optimistic here.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/11/14894 ... -sxsw-2017

Spoiler-Free Thoughts on 15 Minutes of 'Alien: Covenant' SXSW Festival Footage
12 March 2017



"I’m pleased to show you some clips from our latest project, 'Alien: Covenant'. My mantra has always been to scare the living shit out of you".

And after that brisk introduction from director Ridley Scott, we were off. Technically, the crowd in the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin was there to watch a repertory screening of the original 1979 'Alien', Scott’s horror/science fiction classic that has inspired countless imitators, but no equals. However, our session got started with with 15 minutes of the next film in the series, 'Alien: Covenant', with cast members Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride, and Michael Fassbender on hand for a brief Q&A.

We watched three full scenes from the upcoming film and they were very promising: slick, violent, and very intense. Oh, and full of what seem to be major spoilers, but we’ll leave those parts out. Instead, let’s dive into what was on display in this footage in the most spoiler-free way possible.

Crew, Couples, Camaraderie

As we saw in the latest trailer for 'Alien: Covenant', the crew of the titular vessel is comprised entirely of couples, a smart move for a colony spaceship that intends to land on an alien planet and stay there. In the first clip, the crew dynamic was on full display: these people know each other, know each other very well, and have developed a rapport and trust. It’s not clear if the Covenant crew will be as dynamic and down-to-earth as the crew of the Nostromo in the original 'Alien' (space travelers who spend their time bickering about bonuses!), but it feels like a huge course correction after 'Prometheus', whose cast of dullards and dummies didn’t inspire too much affection.

The scene we saw involved a small portion of the crew boarding a smaller shuttle and venturing to the surface of a planet. Naturally, they’re forced to navigate a hostile storm to get there and it’s a fairly tense sequence. But watching the characters deal with this unpleasant and bumpy journey turns out to be pretty fun. Sergeant Lope (Demian Bichir) teases his husband, who is not handling the turbulence well. Over the radio, Tennessee (Danny McBride) trades off-color playful barbs with with his wife (Amy Seimetz), who is piloting the shuttle, and she gives as good as he does. Captain Oram (Billy Crudup) eventually has enough of everyone’s shenanigans.

It’s silly to judge a cast of characters based entirely on a few minutes of out-of-context interaction, but there was more color and personality on display here than in most movies of this kind (and certainly more than there was in 'Prometheus'). The best Alien movies allow us to fall in love with the humans before they’re torn to pieces.

Tons of the Red Stuff

When we visited the set of 'Alien: Covenant' last year, everyone on the production kept insisting that the film will be scary and gory, promising that they used an absurd of amount of fake blood and food products to create viscera. The second clip, which features a quarantine gone wrong and a the arrival of a certain beastie, lived up to that promise. In a vacuum, this scene was frightening and very violent, showcasing how the "neomorph" (one of several new creatures introduced in the movie), uh, exits a host. Anyone familiar with these movies can take a guess about the specifics and land in the proper ballpark, but let’s just say the floors literally grow slippery with gore and that the baby neomorph is born ready to fight and kill and add to that general slipperiness.

The creature action we saw was genuinely intense and unforgiving. Like its larger brother, the xenomorph, the neomorph doesn’t care about whether a character is likable or not before it gets down to business. Watching the charismatic characters introduced in the previous clip struggle to survive in a too-small room that grows increasingly coated in human insides makes for a heart-pounding experience. Hopefully, the final film has more like this.

'Prometheus' Connections and Core Mythology

The third clip was surprising for several reasons. First of all, it features several direct callbacks to 'Prometheus' and explains exactly what one character from the film has been doing for the past decade. Second, it reveals a major piece of the Alien mythology, answering a question that fans have been pondering for decades. Third, it borrows some very familiar iconography and stages the scene in a way that becomes darkly amusing because you know so much more than the characters on the screen. And finally, it feels like a big, huge spoiler and one that I’m surprised Fox was okay letting out into the wild this early.

So let’s not dwell on the details. Instead, just note that 'Alien: Covenant' is very much a 'Prometheus' sequel and that Scott’s stated goal of using these prequels to fill in various gaps in series canon has come to fruition.

http://www.slashfilm.com/alien-covenant-footage-sxsw/

Ridley Scott is pulling a James Cameron, 4 more "Alien" movies coming up





http://www.mrruimy.com/2017/03/ridley-s ... ron-4.html

A Tour of the Gigantic 'Alien: Covenant' Set
1 May 2017



Here's a nifty clip: Adam Savage touring the set of Ridley Scott's 'Alien: Covenant'. Take a look!

Tour of the Set (Video)

You never get tired of looking at all the hard work and jaw-dropping attention to detail that goes into the average 'Alien' movie set. Kinda incredible to see H.R. Giger's aesthetic being painstakingly replicated in fiberglass all these years later.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/05/01/ ... -set-visit

Blomkamp's Alien 5 is not happening = best news I've heard recently

'Alien: Covenant' First Reactions: It's Way Better Than 'Prometheus'
5 May 2017

In space, no-one can hear your rapturous applause



'Alien: Covenant' rolled out the green carpet for the long-awaited sequel to 'Prometheus', and thankfully the first voyagers to see the film are sounding overwhelmingly positive.

Digital Spy has also seen the film and you can expect our full review, along with all the Easter (or Xeno) eggs that you missed from next week.

"'Alien: Covenant' is definitely better than Prometheus, bringing back the needed horror into the franchise. Deadly beautiful and mysterious."
- Jordan Samuel

"Ridley Scott brings back the series to its roots! Visuals are top notch a complete win in IMAX 'Alien: Covenant'."
- Jordan Samuel

"'Alien: Covenant' is an intense, strange and nightmarish continuation of the franchise. A great companion to 'Prometheus' & the Alien mythos."
- Paul Shirey

"Bloody, odd, mysterious and a staggering picture of madness at times. Horrific in unexpected ways.'"
- Paul Shirey

"So lucky! Tonight I saw 'Alien: Covenant'. Fricking epic and exactly what you want it to be."
- Anastasia Takis

"Well, a little overwhelmed, 'Alien: Covenant' is more of the same and yet I loved it!"
- Ben Jennings

"First impressions. More satisfying than 'Prometheus'. Loved the cast and characters."
- Aaron Percival

"'Alien: Covenant' was without a doubt very Alien. Lots to ponder! Expect a detailed write up in the coming days!"
- Scified.com

"'Alien: Covenant' flew by. It will please fans. Lots of classic touches, dark, gruesome at times, of course!"
- Hero Collector

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/alien/ ... rometheus/