From Ridley Scott’s lips to our ears: the sequel to 2012’s Prometheus has gained yet another name. In an interview at the AFI film festival late last week, Scott casually informed the audience that the 2017 film is now known as Alien Covenant. The movie has changed names and forms multiple times over its development—growing from its egg stage as Prometheus 2, to its facehugger stage as Alien: Paradise Lost, and now chest-bursting forth as Alien: Covenant.

The name was confirmed this morning in a tweet by the official 20th Century Fox Twitter account, which not only firmly stated that the movie is part of the Alien franchise, but that it also will be released in late 2017: October 6, 2017, to be precise.

Ridley Scott returns to direct Alien: Covenant, the next installment in the #Alien franchise. In theaters 10/6/17. pic.twitter.com/GGp1axmfTs — 20th Century Fox (@20thcenturyfox) November 16, 2015

The first Prometheus film had a tortured development process, being first pitched as a straight prequel to Scott’s 1979 Alien. During development, the film swerved into less of a direct prequel and more of an origin story, giving glimpses of the enormous humanoid "Engineers" apparently responsible for the creation of the titular aliens (and who, incidentally, also seeded life here on Earth). The scary chest-bursting aliens themselves were never seen on camera—although their biological precursors had several bits of screen time.

The movie closed on somewhat of an open ending, with the protagonist kiting off in a stolen Engineer spacecraft with the apparent intent of visiting the Engineer’s home world. That there would be a Prometheus 2 was considered pretty much as a given, but it’s been unclear how much deeper into the Alien mythos Scott has wanted to take the film. With the abandonment of the "Prometheus" part of the title and the embracing of the "Alien" name, though, it seems like Scott has decided to damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead on fully revisiting the universe (indeed, Fox’s tweet explicitly calls Alien: Covenant "the next installment in the Alien franchise").

Aliens has a thriving tie-in universe, with a tremendous range of tie-in novels and multiple graphic novel series; with his re-entry into the genre, Scott’s actions will likely wipe away a significant amount of established (though non-canonical) lore, much as he erased the previous non-canon history of the Engineers with Prometheus. However, here at the Ars Orbiting HQ, we’re pretty big fans of some of the ideas Scott has started exploring—for years and years, I’ve held the personal theory that the Alien and Aliens aliens are too hyper-specialized and too destructive to be anything other than engineered biological weapons, and that’s something Scott has repeatedly said he, too, believes. When Ars talked with Ridley Scott a few months ago about The Martian, the director said that he was very happy with the script for Prometheus 2 and that it would begin shooting soon; with The Martian successful and out of the way, Scott will be spending the next two years shepherding Alien: Covenant to release.

If Prometheus was an imperfect glance into the genesis of one of cinema’s most notorious baddies, we have high hopes that Alien: Covenant will do a better job of returning them to the screen in high style. If there’s a downside here, it’s that Scott’s movie has pulled focus away from Neill Blomkamp’s untitled Alien film, an Internet-pumped project that looked like it had huge potential to turn into a wonderful entry in the series. Blomkamp tweeted in October that his film was on hold while Scott’s movie moved into production, so there’s always a chance it could appear in 2018 or 2019.

We’re hopeful that Scott will deliver the successful Aliens series film that we’ve been denied since the early '90s, with the disappointments of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. All the ingredients appear to be there, including a revitalized Ridley Scott, and we'll be following the movie's development closely. Maybe, this time, it’ll be okay to dream.