The rumors and the dreams of a million fanboys have come true. Ridley Scott is returning to the Alien franchise. He’ll do it with a prequel being written for 20th Century Fox by Jon Spaihts.

Great news right? The only way things could possibly get better for the Alien franchise is if someone went back in time and shot Paul W.S. Anderson’s father. Since that’s not happening, be happy with this. So let’s talk about exactly what this is.

Variety broke the story but offers no hint as to what the film may be about, other than that it’s a prequel to Ridley’s franchise starting 1979 horror film. For me the biggest question is, how much of a prequel are we talking about here? Are we talking about a film set on modern day Earth for instance, the way Alien vs. Predator was? That’s almost the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, why call it a prequel? Ridley’s original movie takes place in a far off future, you can pretty much do any story you want there without worrying about any specific continuity. No need for the prequel label if that’s when it’s set, you can already go anywhere in that universe. It’s not specific.

But that’s just guesswork. What we do know is that it’s being scripted by Jon Spaihts, who has already written a couple of other outer space thrillers for other projects. So that means thriller, maybe even something more horror oriented like Ridley’s original movie. Sure later films skewed off more towards action horror and that was a lot of fun, but I’m hoping Ridley Scott has scaring the shit out of us on his brain.