Ridley Scott is going to keep tight control over the Prometheus franchise, he stated in a recent interview, in part to make up for mistakes he made regarding the franchise’s original incarnation, the Alien series.

“I’m trying to keep this for myself,” Scott told IGN, talking about the movies planned to follow his 2012 Alien prequel, the first of which — recently re-titled Alien: Paradise Lost — is due in 2017. “I let the other one [Alien] get away from me – I shouldn’t have.”

After directing the original Alien movie in 1979, Scott moved on from the franchise to other projects including 1982’s Blade Runner; subsequently, the series moved from director to director in future installments, including James Cameron’s 1986 Aliens and David Fincher’s 1992 Alien 3.

Although both Scott and franchise star Sigourney Weaver have suggested in the past that the director could return for a fifth movie in the series, the director’s ideas for that movie eventually led to Prometheus, which took the universe in an entirely different direction — one complete with Michael Fassbender’s unnervingly calm android David and the introduction of a new race of aliens called Engineers that might be the forerunners of humanity itself.

“I’m trying to re-resurrect the beast and let if off the hook for a while because I’m coming back into the back-end of Alien 1,” the director told IGN of his plans for the series, echoing earlier comments. “I’m gradually getting to Alien 1.” What that means is that Scott plans to ensure that he’ll finally get around to revealing who’s responsible for the creation of the xenomorphs for the first time — eventually.

“Prometheus 2 will start getting shot in February and I’ve already begun now so I know what the script is,” Scott explained to the site. “Then there will be another one after that and then maybe we’ll back into Alien 1, as to why? Who would make such a dreadful thing?”

via The Hollywood Reporter