Ridley Scott Says Alien: Covenant Sequel Is in the Works — And David Is Coming Back

Scott revealed the update while discussing his upcoming projects with the Los Angeles Times.

According to subsequent reporting from The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker says the third Alien prequel remains in development and would continue David's story following the events of Alien: Covenant.

That matters because Covenant didn't finish David's story neatly.

Quite the opposite.

The 2017 film ended with David aboard the Covenant after masquerading as Walter, the newer synthetic also played by Fassbender.

Daniels discovers the truth rather too late.

David places her into hypersleep and finds himself in control of a ship carrying around 2,000 colonists — along with the embryos he intends to use for his increasingly disturbing experiments.

Then the credits roll.

And that was the last we saw of him.

Scott's description of where the story goes next is fascinating.

The filmmaker says the sequel would pick up with David creating a “brave new world for himself.” Scott remains particularly interested in David as an artificial intelligence that can go dangerously wrong.

Suddenly, that storyline feels far more timely than it did in 2017.

David was already one of the most interesting elements of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

He wasn't simply another evil robot.

David became obsessed with creation.

Human beings created him.

The Engineers created humanity.

And David decided that perhaps he should become a creator himself.

Unfortunately for everyone else in the universe, his preferred creations had acid for blood and a habit of bursting out of people's chests.

Ridley Scott returned to the universe he'd helped create with 2012's Prometheus.

Rather than simply making another movie about people being chased through corridors by Xenomorphs, Scott became interested in bigger questions about creation, humanity, and the mysterious Engineers.

At the centre of those ideas was David.

Michael Fassbender's android survived Prometheus and returned in Alien: Covenant, where Fassbender actually played two synthetics: David and the newer Walter.

By the end of Covenant, David had effectively won.

Scott has talked about continuing that story for years. In 2024, he pointed out that Covenant left him with an almost perfect starting point: Daniels in hypersleep, David possessing alien eggs, and thousands of colonists aboard the ship.

The problem was whether we'd ever actually get to see what happened next.

The Alien franchise hasn't exactly been sitting around waiting for David.

Since Alien: Covenant arrived in 2017, the series has found new life elsewhere.

Alien: Romulus returned the franchise to a more traditional survival-horror approach in 2024, while television has expanded the universe even further.

That made Scott's unfinished prequel storyline increasingly look like something that might simply remain unfinished.

And that's why this latest update matters.

Rather than merely saying he'd like to revisit David someday, Scott is now describing the third prequel as being in the works and talking specifically about where its story goes next.

That still doesn't mean cameras are about to start rolling.

There's no announced release date, production schedule or officially revealed title, and we shouldn't treat Fassbender's involvement as a completed casting announcement yet.

But after nine years of uncertainty, the door certainly appears to be open again.

Whatever you think of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Michael Fassbender's David is difficult to forget.

Cold.

Curious.

Arrogant.

Occasionally very funny.

And completely terrifying.

David gave Scott's prequel movies something fundamentally different from the earlier Alien films.

The Xenomorph might be the monster everyone recognises, but David increasingly became the monster the prequels were actually about.

Fassbender himself has previously said he'd happily return to the world of Alien and work with Scott again.

Whether that ultimately happens remains to be seen.

But if Scott finally gets to make this third chapter, it's difficult to imagine finishing David's story without the actor who made him so memorable.

This is the part we'd really like to see.

Prometheus began digging into where humanity came from.

Covenant pushed David towards becoming a creator himself.

And somewhere down the road sits the nightmare that started everything:

Alien.

Scott has spent years discussing his desire to bridge his prequel story towards the universe of his 1979 classic.

A third film finally gives him the opportunity to complete that journey.

Whether everybody wants every mystery surrounding the Xenomorph explained is another question entirely.

Part of what made Alien so frightening was how little we knew.

But David's story deserves some sort of conclusion.

You don't leave a homicidal android alone with alien embryos, 2,000 sleeping colonists and an entire spaceship and then expect us not to wonder what happened next.

We'll keep the champagne cork firmly in the bottle for now.

A project being “in the works” in Hollywood and a movie actually appearing in cinemas are two very different things.

We've been here before with an Alien: Covenant sequel.

But this is the most interesting update we've had in some time because Ridley Scott isn't merely talking about whether another film could happen.

He's talking about the story.

David survived.

David has his colonists.

David has his experiments.

And apparently David intends to build himself a brave new world.

After nine years, we'd quite like to see it.

Just maybe don't volunteer to be one of the colonists.