Ridley Scott has approximately a bascrillion projects in the works right now (Movieline has a handy guide if you, like me, are very confused), but one of the ones that probably will happen is another Alien movie. Choose to be excited about it or not, but you have to admit it's intriguing to think about an Alien prequel, meaning a movie without Ridley, or any humans whatsoever.

Well, maybe. We'd all been assuming thus far that the movie would be entirely about aliens, but talking to Empire, Scott seemed to promise that he's full of surprises.

"It’s a brand new box of tricks. We know what the road map is, and the screenplay is now being put on paper. The prequel will be a while ago. It’s very difficult to put a year on Alien, but [for example] if Alien was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior.”

Empire also includes the puzzling line "Sir Ridley and his writer, Jon Spaihts, have decided to reboot the story in an attempt to give it a human focus," which is either a poor choice of words on their part, or a suggestion that humans will be part of the story after all. There's no knowing exactly where this will go until the screenplay is finished, but I'm starting to have more and more faith that Sir Ridley and company can make something worthwhile here.