Ridley Scott has teased that the prequels to his 1979 horror movie Alien will be "really nasty".

The 72-year-old director, who recently revealed plot details of the upcoming films, warned Virgin Media that his intention to explore the back story of the extraterrestrial monsters would not make for easy viewing.

"The film will be really tough, really nasty. It's the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?"

The Gladiator mastermind added that he was determined to craft a superior product to James Cameron's own intergalactic epic Avatar.

"Jim's raised the bar and I've got to jump to it," Scott stated. "He's not going to get away with it."

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