We’ve brought you quite a lot of news lately on the development of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequels, including his interview with the Independent in which he laid out his plans for the tone and scope for the films. Sadly, the news we bring today is of trouble for the production.
The first problem is with the budget. Scott wants a big budget of $250m to be able to make a sci-fi spectacular (although whether this is for one film or the total for the two rumoured prequels is unclear), however 20th Century Fox clearly think this excessive and were anticipating investing a much lesser sum. The second issue is over planned ratings. Scott wants to push the violence and horror content and go for a full-blooded 18 rating, whereas Fox want a 15 rating to be able to secure as wide an audience as possible.
The difficulty here is that increasingly the tone of films is being pushed towards a younger demographic, who tend to be the most frequent cinema attenders. Scott is a man of his principles though and will no doubt be determined to see his vision up on screen, rather that a diluted version of it.
After the violence and horror of the first two Alien films, the certificates gradually dropped (15’s for Alien 3 and Resurrection, 12A for AvP), before picking up again to 18 for the lamentable and incoherent AvP:Requiem. It is hard to know whether Fox are concerned as to Scott’s ability to deliver a great, commercially successful film and therefore do not want to be over-exposed on the budget, or whether the two issues are connected and they fear that too high a certificate will make it all the more difficult to recoup the budget in box-office takings.
No doubt there will need to be a bit of give and take and in the end, Scott seems like the sort of director who, given his box office and critical success, won’t proceed if he is not completely happy. Hopefully we will be able to bring you news soon of the wrinkles having been smoothed out and the production moving forward.
