Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' Sequel Gets (Another) New Title, Synopsis

Michael Fassbender in ‘Prometheus’ (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Kerry Brown)

By Graeme McMillan

The follow-up to 2012’s Prometheus has mutated once again, with 20th Century Fox confirming Monday morning that the movie, directed by Ridley Scott, will now be titled Alien: Covenant.

The title, first revealed by Scott during an appearance at the AFI Film Festival, was confirmed by Fox via Twitter this morning, accompanied by a title card for the movie (see below). The studio then released a new synopsis for Covenant, revealing that the title comes from a new ship introduced in the movie; Prometheus, too, was named after the spaceship the crew traveled in.

The synopsis reads, “Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in Alien with Alien: Covenant, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the ‘synthetic’ David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.”

The synopsis includes the first official mention of Prometheus being the first in a prequel trilogy to the Alien franchise; Scott has previously suggested that the sequence could potentially run to four movies. (Neill Blomkamp remains working on a separate Alien project, produced by Scott, that takes place after James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens.)

The Covenant announcement marks the second time the movie has been renamed in recent months, with Scott telling an interviewer in September that the project, originally called simply Prometheus 2 would instead be called Alien: Paradise Lost.