Prometheus Almost Featured A Sex Scene With A Chest-Burster

Consider this your official warning: there are spoilers about Ridley Scott's Prometheus in this article. If you haven't seen the film and wish to be surprised by it when you do eventually see it, I suggest that you turn around now and click on another article to read.

As it stands there is plenty of carnage, blood-letting and general horror featured in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, from the violent attack on the scientists by the eel-like facehuggers to the alien removal in the medpod. But what you may not know is that an earlier script introduced another bit of awfulness in the movie's only sex scene as well.

In an interview with Jon Spaihts, who wrote the original draft of Prometheus, Empire revealed that his version of the sex scene between Holloway and Shaw (Logan Marshall-Green and Noomi Rapace) was quite a bit different than what we saw in the final movie. In the first drafts Holloway wasn't infected by David (Michael Fassbender), but instead was exposed to a facehugger and impregnated via the standard facehugger method. After he finds his way back to the ship he has sex with Shaw, but their love making isn't as peaceful as its played in the theatrical cut. "It's while they're making love that he bursts and dies," Spaihts said. "So that lovemaking sequence echoed my original lovemaking sequence where he explodes! It was messy."

Because of the way the scene played out in that version of the script, you'd think that Shaw would never get "pregnant" and that the medpod scene wouldn't be included, but apparently that was from Spaihts draft as well. According to the writer, his version of the script featured David as a more villainous character who actually ties Shaw down and exposes her to a face hugger. Said Spaihts, "David doesn't smell like a person - his breath isn't moist - so he can handle the thing like a kitten. It doesn't want him; it's not interested. But then he exposes it to her and it goes for her like a shot. He toys with her for a bit and then lets it take her." Obviously this leaves her with an alien inside of her that she must then remove (the operation would no longer be a Caesarean section, but the idea is the same).

It sounds like Spaihts script really wasn't changed that much when Damon Lindelof was brought in, as all of the major plot points seem to be the same, just with different ways of arriving to them.

Prometheus will be on Blu-ray tomorrow and you can read more about the movie in our Blend Film Database.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.