They're Remaking 'Alien' -- the 'Prometheus' thread

What's that company that makes knockoff movies to coincide with releases? I have this theory that the only way to stop this revival madness is to saturate the market with so many degraded versions that any public appetite for them would be obliterated. ALIEN FANFICTION TO THE RESCUE

x-post

It could be like a more tragic Top Gun, where a fresh young facehugger falls in love with his instructor, a human woman. She dies in an accident, but a hundred years later he meets her great-graddaughter in the events of the first Alien.

that granddaughter? veronica cartright.

Legally Blonde Alien, with Reese Witherspoon

When a blonde sorority queen alien is dumped by her boyfriend, she decides to follow him to his planet to get him back and, once there, learns she has more legal savvy than she ever imagined.

Alien Brockovich, with Julia Roberts

An unemployed single alien mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a global power company accused of polluting a planet's water supply.

Wasn't that the plot of Erin Brockovich?

It's a tribute script.

How's this for high-concept: A remake of Predator starring the Alien as Predator.

re: alien brockovic -- I was making bad joke about Julia Roberts looking not quite human, having second mouth.

Would pay to see Ordinary Aliens dir. by Redford.

Chestburst On The 4th Of July

AVPVSW

Alien vs Predator vs Sand Worms (from Dune)

all human roles portrayed by Tracy Morgan

Who won when Alien fought Predator?

the predalien, duh

i would like to see a movie about an alien-human war done in the style of the thin red line

Why is it that every movie franchise is all about remakes and reboots these days? Doesn't anybody believe in sequels anymore? Personally, I would've wanted to know what happened after the ending of Alien 4, but apparently no one else cares.

omg yes

that is an xpost

tho pop culture is so weird these days that if someone told me that terrence malick was making the next alien movie i would believe it. i don't know if anything in popcult has the power to surprise me anymore.

will whoever the female lead in this remake wear as ridiculously small panties as Ripley in the remakes denouement?

are you asking me?

I don't know anyone else on ILX we could ask!

i'm asking the universe. plus slocki.

slocki, sloggi - ok, makes sense.

ok well... i might as well just tell you. the answer is yes!

terrence malick is directing the reboot of the first wives club franchise

i believe it, thank you for telling me true new information

hollywood officially sucks from now on

Oh for fuck's sake. [Shoots self]

im not even like a huge alien guy but this is about the most retarded shit ever.

on paper.

five years ago i'd have at least made an effort to say 'hey maybe it'll *exceed* the original'.

but it's a pretty basic story that can't be fucked with, and no-one would get sued if they made a different movie that involved an alien.

(Not That) Alien

industry/business people, do you know if there's some legal reason like company's rights to the franchise expire if they don't keep churning out remakes? I remember there was some bogus fantastic 4 movie made for some weird business-related reason.

Trading Places with a Wall Street player and an Alien switching roles.

Wall Street starring Alien in Gordon Gecko role (and one that pops out of Darryl Hannah at the end).

The fact that Rodriguez is going to remake Predator as Predators gave me major lols. A long running and rubbish joke I have with some friends is to question whether any sequel or remake will be called the name of the original film pluralised. If pluralisation doesn't work I ask if it will be the original title with "another" appended to the start and if that doesn't work I ask if it will be called the original with "again" at the end of it.

So presumably the sequel to Predators will be Another Predators again: the virus takes Manhattan.

Home Alone where the McCauley Culkin role is actually a young alien who discovers its powers while fending off would-be robbers.

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/2189/youvegotmail.jpg

<3<3<3

my new desktop background

industry/business people, do you know if there's some legal reason like company's rights to the franchise expire if they don't keep churning out remakes? I remember there was some bogus fantastic 4 movie made for some weird business-related reason.

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 28 May 2009 23:34 (Yesterday) Permalink

ha, yeah Roger Corman made that one! supposedly bootlegs of it were sold at comic conventions for years.

http://www.teako170.com/ffmovie.html

That's insane. Has anyone here seen it?

it can't be much worse than the one that actually came out

industry/business people, do you know if there's some legal reason like company's rights to the franchise expire if they don't keep churning out remakes? I remember there was some bogus fantastic 4 movie made for some weird business-related reason.

I think this is true, and comic book superheroes is a good example. The actual superhero comic books are protected by copyright laws, and at the moment it's still a couple of decades before even the oldest of them fall into public domain. (However, apparently works copyrighted in the US before 1964 had to have their copyright renewed during the 28th year of their copyright term, otherwise they fell into the public domain. This has happened with at least some comics, records, and movies.) The names of superheroes are trademarks though, and trademark law is quite different from copyright. In order for a company to have the rigth to exclusive use of a trademark, the trademark has to be in active use. If the trademark isn't in active use for a certain period of time (in the US this is 5 years), it is considered public domain, and someone else can then register it. This, I think, is the reason DC comics has continuosly kept churning out Wonder Woman comic books throughout the decades, even during times when Wonder Woman has been quite unpopular. They don't want loose the trademark "Wonder Woman", so they have to have it in active use even if it means putting out comics that don't sell much. I'm not totally sure about this, but I assume the names "Alien" and "Predator" are similarly trademarked, so the same would apply to them as to Wonder Woman. I think there's been longer than a 5 year gap between Alien and Predator movies, but the various Alien and Predator comic books, books, and toys must've kept the trademarks in active use.

With 'Wonder Woman', too, I believe there was something in the creator (who was a bit of a mad genius)'s contract saying that if she didn't keep being published by DC Comics, the rights would revert to him and his family.

Are you sure about that? Because I can't imagine that back then, decades before the rise of creator-owned comics, any comic publisher would sign a contract like that. In those days pretty much every comic creator signed the copyright away to the company publishing the comic, which lead to cases like Siegel's and Shuster's famous 25-year legal battle to be recognized as the creators of Superman.

Wonder Woman is weird, though, like it was created by someone who wrote child psychology books as their main line or something like that. I guess I could just look it up...

Well, who knows about the rights, this is pretty interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston

An interesting case depicting the oddities of copyright and trademark law happened in the 1980s, when Malibu published two collections of old Mickey Mouse newspaper strips by Floyd Gottfredson. Apparently the strips themselves had fallen into public domain, probably because Disney hadn't bothered to renew their copyright in due time. However, Disney obviously still owns the trademark for Mickey Mouse, so Malibu couldn't use pictures of Mickey or even the name "Mickey Mouse" in the cover of the book. So they released those collections under the name "The Uncensored Mouse", with a totally black cover. Disney ended up suing them anyway. You can read more about the case here (scroll down a bit to get to the relevant part):

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/08/09/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-115/

http://www.collider.com/2009/05/29/exclusive-tony-scott-confirms-carl-rinsch-is-directing-alien-and-its-a-prequel/

A few days ago, Bloody-Disgusting reported that 20th century Fox was going to remake “Alien” and director Carl Rinsch would be helming the movie. Immediately fandom exploded with venom. I think one of the main reasons is that the original is a classic, and 20th Century Fox hasn’t been making films of that caliber recently.

So at today’s junket for Tony Scott’s new film “The Taking of Pelham 123″, I went up Tony after the press conference ended to ask him what was up with the remake.

The big news is he confirmed Carl Rinsch would be directing it and that it’s a prequel to his brother Ridley’s classic!

What Tony told me is after the jump:

Collider: 20th Century Fox is talking about remaking or redoing the original Alien. What’s going on with that?

alien_xenomorph_02.jpgTony Scott: Yes, Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company.

Collider: I’m going to be blunt about this. Fox has not been doing a great job recently with their movies. They haven’t been an artist friendly studio. Are you guys going to have some creative control and make this a kick-ass film?

Tony: Yes! But Fox is our home. They finace our production company.

Collider: And I’m very happy that you guys have the financing. But a lot of the films they’ve been doing at the studio level, they’ve been nickel and diming and not giving fandom what they want. So I guess my question for you is…are you a little nervous about reengaging the franchise or are you excited.

Tony: I’m excited cause Ridley created the original and Carl Rinsch is one of the family.

Collider: When do you envision this film getting in front of cameras?

Tony: Hopefully the end of the year.

Collider: Will it be a summer of 2011 movie?

Tony: Honestly, I don’t know.

While I wish I could give you more info, I only had moments to talk with him. Look for more “Alien” info as I get it.

= better than prometheus :D

i’m going to invite you all to a double feature of Solo and Prometheus and explain in a very irritating voice exactly why each one is good, while we’re watching it

I never saw "Solo," but if it went the way of "Willow" on Disney+, would anyone notice?

Well I'd have to find something else to do at 11pm every night of the week

You could watch "Free Solo," alone, while drinking beer from a red Solo cup.

Still impressed that stupid Prometheus was basically the exact same plot as stupid Alien vs Predator, just with alien planet instead of Antarctica, and weird playdo men instead of Predators. Otherwise all the same (alien temple, messianic Weyland, fuckwit scientists, weirdly invulnerable female lead, etc).

this fathead futzing around with origin stories and metaphysics when we could STILL HAVE THIS

The full-grown aliens were originally going to be transparent and their heads full of maggots. This was too hard to pull off though. And, originally, the alien Giger designed had eyes. He asked for the eyes to be removed when the effects team started building it.

26/38 pic.twitter.com/j2LzIQ9E2Z

— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) May 25, 2023

original is 44 today, and this thread is grebt: i wanna see the robert altman version

Alternately, Tarkovsky.

Alien with eyes definitely paved the way for his ELP cover:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0d/ELP_-_Brain_Salad_Surgery.jpg/220px-ELP_-_Brain_Salad_Surgery.jpg

This cover was from 1974, though!

Oh shit, so ELP invented the alien!

I may have been thinking of the Debbie Harry album.

Hahaha

The Alien was spawned on Love Beach.

they used the skull/eye socket version in alien: resurrection! pretty well, imo. the scene where the more-human alien is sniffing ripley/mom is creepy

There’s a TV series of Alien being (verrrrrrrry slowly) made, which caused a pause on any idiotic film projects for the moment.

There's a film, directed by Fede Alvarez, shooting as we speak. From the little info there is about it, it does sound like a Prey-style b-movie take

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2edS2FlrK4