Film director Ridley Scott has revealed he is convinced that aliens are really out there - and one day they will come for us.

The veteran filmmaker is preparing to release the sixth film in the Alien sci-fi horror series, Alien: Covenant, next month.

He said: "I believe in superior beings. I think it is certainly likely.

"An expert I was talking to at NASA said to me 'have you ever looked in the sky at night? You mean to tell me we are it?' That's ridiculous.

"The experts have now put a number on it having assessed what is out there. They say that there are between 100 and 200 entities that could be having a similar evolution to us right now.


"So when you see a big thing in the sky, run for it. Because they are a lot smarter than we are, and if you are stupid enough to challenge them you will be taken out in three seconds."

The new film - the second prequel which is set before the 1979 original starring Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, John Hurt and Yaphet Kotto - is set in 2104 on board a spaceship carrying 2,000 cryogenically frozen colonists to a distant planet.

On their journey, they chance upon an uncharted paradise, but it soon turns into a nightmare.

Scott, 79, said he has never tired of scaring moviegoers.

He said: "When I did the first Alien I had to get a sense of responsibility because the reaction to the kitchen ('chestbuster') scene with John Hurt was beyond anything I expected - and it was not good.

"But the film was very successful because people are perverse.

"Everybody was half underneath the seat watching by the time you get to the kitchen scene. There was a woman underneath the seat with her husband holding her."

The director, however, is not so easily scared.

He said: "Nothing scares me. I have a 9mm (pistol).

"If there is a problem I tend to close down into calm. When you walk in in the morning on a film and 600 people turn and all look at you, that is scary."

Scott, who was knighted in 2003, is about to make a film about the Battle of Britain during World War II.

:: Alien: Covenant opens on 10 May.