Prometheus 2 will star Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace

Very few updates for the planned Prometheus 2 have been revealed since development was announced last year. A release date was set for March 4, 2016, which was already an impossibility for the follow-up, but now Total Film (via SciFied) has revealed in an article on Ridley Scott’s The Martian that the 77-year-old director is set to begin filming the sequel in January of 2016.

One thing that won’t be present for the sequel are the fan-favorite Xenomorphs from the original Alien franchise.

“The beast is done,” Scott previously said about the monster. “Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It’s very hard to repeat that. I just happen to be the one who forced it through because they said it’s obscene. They didn’t want to do it and I said, ‘I want to do it, it’s fantastic.’ But after four, I think it wears out a little bit. There’s only so much snarling you can do. I think you’ve got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we’ve found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start.”

Written by Michael Green and Jack Paglen, Prometheus 2 will feature the return of Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace. The original film also starred Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron. It grossed over $400 million at the global box office, making it the highest grossing entry in the “Alien” franchise.