Prometheus UK PosterLast night we were outside the Empire cinema, in the newly renovated Leicester Square for the world premiere of Prometheus. We’ll had quite a successful time on the red carpet, and later today we’ll be publishing interviews with Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Noomi Rapace, Rafe Spall, screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts, as well as the production designer Arthur Max and composer Marc Streitenfeld.

Like I said, we were quite successful.

First up though, is our interview with producer, Michael Costigan, during which he talks about exactly where the film fits in relation to the Alien franchise, what we’re likely to see in a sequel (or indeed two sequels) to the movie, and how much influence the production team had on the viral videos that have been exciting the internet for the last few weeks.

When it comes to this movie, there’s been a lot of uncertainty to where it fits in the Alien franchise. When someone asks you, how do you describe its relationship to the Alien films?

I’ll try to avoid being pretentious about it, but this movie is its own original film, period, plain and simple, but what it is is the Alien franchise – if this is a movie that takes place before it, the Alien franchise is one thread that can emerge from this film. If we’re fortunate enough to make more ‘Prometheuses’, you could make ten, and not link up with the franchise, or you could do as Ridley’s suggested and make two more.

From the beginning, what Ridley was passionate about was not making a prequel that would tell you who Ripley’s mom was, or how exactly that ship got there, that was never what he was interested in. He was interested in a much larger question, which is about the nature of life itself, who we are, how we got here, and what he saw was a larger idea in the franchise that had never been explored, which was who would make such a horrible creature and why? And in looking at that creature, it came to look at the origins of ourselves.

Prometheus explores a lot of different ideas, and a lot of different themes. Do you think that you’ve got enough material for a sequel? There is so much already packed into the film.

Sequels are hard. We should be so fortunate to have that problem is the short answer, the longer answer is, yeah of course there’s enough different ideas. You meet these makers, but you don’t know that much more about them, so there’s a larger story to be told about them in the future, and our relationship to them. I think one of the biggest questions, but this is getting ahead of ourselves, is why they stopped coming? If they came once, why didn’t they come again? There’s plenty of questions. That’s what Noomi’s asking about at the end of the film, and what she’s asking at the end of the film, there’s 15 movies in that. Certainly one more.

Obviously Ridley’s known for doing director’s cuts of his films, quite epic long ones. This comes in at two hours, so how much is on the cutting room floor, and how much will we get on the Blu-Ray?

The nature of those director’s cuts has changed with Blu-Ray. There’s certainly some additional material that can be added, I think enhance a few things. It’ll be to show more, it won’t be because he feels dissatisfied with this cut, this is the cut he stands by and loves, there’s no major secret looming that hasn’t been included – at least not that comes to the top of my head. There’ll be some goodies. I think also in this one, a lot of the things we’ve explored in the viral pieces, have also given him – I think that’s what’s been so satisfying for him. What’s so satisfying about the process is that some of the things a director looks to do, those viral films allow you to kind of explore some different ideas.

So they weren’t generated by the marketing department then?

No, they were 100% led by us. That was working with Ridley on the script, and frequently different ideas would pop up, that you knew, in building the mythology for this movie, it’s a two hour movie, there’s a limit to how much can make it into the film, and so different ideas were accrued over time, and we logged them. We started making those movies while we were shooting the film.

Did Ridley direct them?

No he did not, no. A couple of brilliant [Ridley Scott Associates] directors did. We were fortunate to do it, and our cast was incredibly gracious about participating in them.

Do you think we may get to see some more of those then?

That’s a good question, you should be demanding those before the Blu-Ray. I would hope, if there’s anything additional on the Blu-Ray, it should be more of those.

 

 

You can read our Prometheus review here.