Yesterday, was Alien Day and is meant to celebrate everything connected to the Alien franchise that started with Ridley Scott’s original film from 1979.
Alien 5 concept artist TyRuben Ellingson (Avatar, Pacific Rim, Elysium) took to Twitter to share some new concept art that had him tackle a resign of the Colonial Marine dropship from James Cameron’s Aliens called a Sky Crane for the unmade Neill Blomkamp film.
2nd brush with ALIEN franchise; Blomkamp’s ALIEN 5. Worked 3 months with Neill before studio pulled plug. Work still locked down, however, design development was discontinued on this. Sky Crane variant Cheyenne Drop-ship. SketchUp renders. #AlienDay2020 #AlienDay #LV426 pic.twitter.com/oHJFOYVUvy
— TyRuben Ellingson (@TyRuben) April 26, 2020
2nd brush with ALIEN franchise; Blomkamp’s ALIEN 5. Work still locked down, however, design development was discontinued on this. Sky Crane variant Cheyenne Drop-ship. Additional renders. SketchUp renders. #AlienDay2020 #AlienDay #LV426 pic.twitter.com/CGpLKLpILn
— TyRuben Ellingson (@TyRuben) April 26, 2020
Neill wanted to make an organic sequel to Aliens instead of a direct sequel to 1997’s Alien Resurrection, suggesting he’d ignore the films that were made after Aliens. The idea was to bring back characters killed-off in David Fincher’s third film including Newt and Dwayne Hicks.
Alien 5 started as a private thing that eventually got the attention of 20th Century Fox and they put Blomkamp’s idea into development with the idea that Sigourney Weave would reprise the Ellen Ripley role and could potentially see an adult Newt taking over the franchise from her.
During Alien 5’s pre-production stage the film seemingly lost its budget and the plug was pulled to instead focus on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, a sequel to his prequel film Prometheus. The project eventually died and Blomkamp would pivot to multiple other films instead including RobCop Returns, that would also act as a direct sequel to the original 1987 film.
Hopefully, one day 20th Century Studios/Disney will try to resurrect Alien 5 or at the very least put together an art book with all the fantastic concept/production artwork that was put together during its development. We have only seen a small glimpse of what they created.
What do you think of the Sky Crane?
