Not content (and why should she be?) with entering the grand galaxy of Star Wars, and continuing her journey on Pandora in Avatar, but Sigourney Weaver may well be ready to return to her signature role of Ellen Ripley. Speaking onstage at last weekends New York Comic Con, Weaver revealed that no less a luminary than Walter Hill (producer of Alien and Exec producer and co-writer on Aliens and Alien 3) has written 50 pages detailing where he believes Ripley would be bow, and importantly Sigourney likes what she’s read.
Weaver served up one big revelation during the hour-long event: writer-director Walter Hill — best known for 48 Hours and The Warriors — is working on a new Alien story that brings Ripley back into the franchise fold. (Hill briefly flirted with directing Dan O’Bannon’s script, before deciding against it; he did contribute rewrites to the first Alien and served as a producer on Aliens and Alien 3.) “He’s a very good friend of mine, and he wrote 50 pages [about] where Ripley would be now,” the sci-fi icon said. “They’re quite extraordinary.”
Weaver added that she’s never felt compelled to resurrect her beloved character since her final bow in 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. “I was always like, ‘Let her rest, let her recover’,” Weaver said of her alter ego. But the actress recently met with executives at Disney — which has owned the Alien franchise since purchasing 20th Century Fox in 2019 — about the possibility of another adventure based on Hill’s storyline.
“What Walter has written seems so true to me,” Weaver said. “[His script is] very much about the society that would incarcerate someone who has tried to help mankind, but she’s a problem to them, so she’s sort of tucked away. I think it’s a very strong first 50 pages. I’m thinking about working with Walter to see what the rest of the story would be.”
