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For a long time, the “Alien” franchise never had a clear direction. Even James Cameron’s classic sequel “Aliens” took the property in quite a different direction from the tight, focused horror of Ridley Scott’s original, while “Alien3” and “Alien: Resurrection” both proved to be interfered-with, unloved, compromised messes, cueing up a fifteen year stretch when the only time the xenomorph ever appeared on screen was in the terrible cash-in “Alien Vs. Predator” movies.

Things are different now: Ridley Scott returned to the series he created with 2012’s “Prometheus,” and follows it up with the imminent “Alien: Covenant,” which promises to further expand the mythology of the creation of the series, and apparently sets up as many as four more “Alien” movies, including the apparently-next “Alien: Awakening.” But one casualty of Scott’s newfound interest in the series was a different take, set long after the Alien timeline, that would have been directed by “District 9” helmer Neill Blomkamp.

READ MORE: New ‘Alien: Covenant’ Prologue Short Shows What Happened To Michael Fassbender & Noomi Rapace After ‘Prometheus’

The South African helmer initially announced towards the start of 2015 that he was developing an “Alien” movie that would have ignored everything after “Aliens” and returned Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn to the series, but not long after, rumors suggested that Scott had wanted to move ahead on the film that became “Alien: Covenant” first, and that Blomkamp’s picture was on hold. And after the “Chappie” creator suggested that chances of his film getting made were now “slim” earlier in the year, Scott has more or less ejected the film out of the airlock.

In an interview with Allocine (via Comic Book Resources), Scott was asked about the project, but says that it never got very far, saying, “There was never a screenplay, just an idea that evolved into a pitch of 10 pages.” And, ultimately, Scott says that Fox were the ones that decided to go in another direction. “I was always just a producer, but it didn’t go any further because Fox decided that it didn’t want to do it.”

Given that the cooling on the project coincided with the not-great box office on “Chappie,” that’s maybe not a huge surprise, but we have to say, we were definitely curious about Blomkamp’s take on the series, even if he’s still yet to live up to his first movie. We’ll see whether Scott makes us further regret the project’s demise when “Alien: Covenant” screens very soon — look for our review on Saturday, ahead of the film’s release on May 19th.