What Could Have Been / Alien

Franchise

• Ridley Scott wanted to make the film that would be Prometheus as soon as 2002, with James Cameron attached to write the story, but they passed on it when FOX announced they were going to make Alien vs. Predator. When he returned to the franchise with Prometheus, he deliberately made the AVP duology Canon Discontinuity.
• Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection nearly became Canon Discontinuity during the writing of Alien: Sea of Sorrows, before 20th Century Fox changed their mind and had the author revise the book to reference the events of the films. Rumors proclaimed that the fifth film was going to decanonize them, but Blomkamp himself debunked the rumors, saying his comments were being taken out of context.
• Of all the places, the Disney Theme Parks intended to make the franchise into a ride at Tomorrowland involving a Xenomorph being accidentally released into a confined spaceship with the guests. Due to some of the management not wanting to associate with an R-rated movie (a move they've since gone back on), changes were made at the last minute to create The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, such as using an original species that was a vague Xenomorph expy. Another idea that had also been considered was a Light Gun Game ride where guests would take aim at Xenomorphs invading a spaceship, but this too never came to be. Alien was finally able to make it into the Disney parks in 1989, when it was included among the many scenes of The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios. However, the ride was closed in 2017, leaving the franchise without any sort of theme park presence once again.

Original series

Alien

• Harrison Ford turned down the role of Captain Dallas.
• Ridley Scott wanted to cast Meryl Streep as Ripley. However, Streep's boyfriend John Cazale had just died, and it was felt it would be inappropriate to approach her about the part.
• Helen Mirren auditioned for a role (most likely Ripley).
• Brad Davis was offered the role of Kane.
• Ridley Scott and some of the cast mention in the DVD Commentary that he had the idea that casual sex happened between any and all members of the group regardless of sex, and that, in hindsight, he would have liked to show a homosexual relationship. A scene related to this would have been a conversation between Ripley and Lambert, one clarifying that they had either had sex or been solicited for sex by every man on the ship except Ash, as a way of foreshadowing that he is, in fact, an android. (Related to the above example, there were talks of a lesbian relationship between Ripley and Lambert.) The novelization by Alan Dean Foster, based on earlier screenplay edits, strengthens the casual sex implications by including a scene where Ripley directly asks Lambert if she slept with Ash. Lambert replies that she hadn't, but only because Ash didn't seem interested.
• In the original script by Dan O'Bannon, the derelict Engineer ship resembled a large mushroom, probably meant to evoke the classical UFO shape, whose inner corridor had marks of some kind of desintegrator gun, as if there had been a full-fledged battle inside. The Engineer corpse was originally a skeleton, not a fossil, and wasn't a large humanoid, but "a grotesque thing, bearing no resemblance to the human form" whose head they took to analyze. But most importantly, the Alien eggs weren't in the ship itself, but in a nearby pyramid in the planet's surface, built by a race completely different from the Engineers, whose shape the Engineer pilot had scratched in his panel. Inside the pyramid, where there was breathable air, they would find hieroglyphics showing creatures "half anthropoid, half octopus," presumably its true builders. As it can be inferred, many of those ideas were later reused in both Alien vs. Predator and Prometheus.
• Here◊ is Dan O'Bannon's original concept art for the creature that terrorised the Nostromo (back then named Snark).
• A change from the script was that originally, Ripley was unable to abort the self-destruct sequence because the engine core meltdown had already begun. In the finished film, Ripley misses the cut-off point by a matter of seconds, and Mother simply refuses to abort the sequence, leading to a furious Ripley smashing Mother's computer monitor.
• There was going to be a scene where the alien uses a human shield against a flamethrower, and a line where one crew-member describes the beheading of another as "horrible, like a chicken".
• The original script had a Downer Ending where the alien kills Ripley, then imitates her voice in a call to Earth, indicating it's headed there next. Scott was persuaded that the film was horrific enough without it.
• Scott drew storyboards depicting an extended climax between Ripley and the alien, in which she's also hurled out into space with the alien, then she shoots at it in the head with a pistol, climbs back into the escape ship with the cable of the harpoon gun and blasts the shuttle's rocket engines on the alien, disintegrating it onscreen. It was cut because the movie already went way over budget. Scott also planned to insert a stinger that showed an egg/alien spawn being left aboard.
• Giger's design for the Chestburster was originally based very strongly on Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion◊, depicting creatures that while quite phallic are also more birdlike, being based on the Greek Furies. Giger's doubts about his first design were confirmed when Scott fell about laughing at the sight of the prototype Chestburster, describing it as "like a plucked turkey", and Roger Dicken ended up retooling it to resemble the now classic design.
• Originally, before the crew wakes up, several small flying robots, called "Mice", would travel up and down the corridors of the ship fixing problems automatically. The idea was scrapped out of budget concerns, and also because the studio felt it moved the film too far in a science-fiction direction and would warrant unwanted comparisons with Star Wars.
• Parker and Brett were to leave the ship on a small vehicle (affectionately known as the "Flying Bedstead" by the production team) to inspect the ship's intake valves. Parker notices one of the seals is damaged, and it is this damage that causes the Nostromo problems when it lands on LV-426. The scene was designed to show the scale of the vessel, but budget concerns meant that it was cut before filming.
• Originally, Lambert was to have a holographic, computerized map projected onto the inside of her space suit helmet as she, Dallas and Kane explore the moon, to help them find their way in the poor visibility and better see the terrain ahead.
• When Dallas, Kane and Lambert head for the source of the signal on the moon's surface, they were to pause and rest near a large rock formation. When they move on, Ash, watching from his science station aboard the Nostromo, notices a strange formation in the rock that is revealed to be the dead Space Jockey, fossilized inside the rock. The sequence was devised as a means to ensure that the Space Jockey still made an appearance in the film when 20th Century Fox executives complained that the interior derelict set would be too expensive and needed to be cut. However, when the studio relented and allowed the interiors to be built, the scene became superfluous and was dropped.
• The crew were originally supposed to find an intricate mural depicting the reproductive cycle of the Xenomorph inside the derelict, with stylized illustrations of a Facehugger emerging from an Egg, subduing a host, and the Chestburster later erupting from them. H. R. Giger completed a mural for this scene and a piece of test footage showing a torch beam moving over it was filmed, but ultimately the mural was not included in the film, partly because there seemed to be no appropriate place for it, and partly because Scott became concerned that the images inscribed upon it would foretell the shocking Chestburster sequence and dampen that scene's impact.
• Particularly jarringly, the Aliens were originally conceived of as a fully sapient, peaceful, and cultured species, that just happened to have a parasitic reproductive cycle and a bestial, incredibly aggressive child/adolescent phase. The Facehugger eggs would have been found inside an "egg silo" built by this species, a pyramid-like combination of temple and nursery where lower animals were ritually impregnated and the resulting young tended to by the adults as they grew older and less violent. In this version, the Nostromo crew would've happened upon the egg silo eons after an unknown catastrophe killed all the adult Aliens, leaving only their dormant eggs at the bottom of the pyramid, waiting for a host to arrive.
• Originally, the exploration team was to recover the Pilot's head from the derelict and take it back to the Nostromo for study.
• The initial examination of Kane on board the Nostromo, including the removal of his helmet, was to be done with remotely operated medical equipment.
• Instead of being violently shot out into space, Kane's body was originally going to be gently set adrift by two of the ship's crewmembers who went outside in space suits. This scene was again to feature the Flying Bedstead.
• More nudity was going to be in the film, with the characters often walking around naked to show how comfortable they are with each other. Ripley was supposed to be nude when she changes into the spacesuit at the end - and the alien was even going to be Distracted by the Sexy for a moment. However, producers were worried that the film would be banned in other countries, and insisted Ripley be wearing underwear.
• There's also a Deleted Scene where Lambert gets tail-whipped by an alien...which then proceeds to shuffle across the room on all fours like a crab before attacking, despite clearly being capable of walking on its own hind legs.
• Following Kane's funeral, Dallas was to confront Ash alone in the medbay and accuse him of not only knowing about the embyo that had been growing inside Kane, but of actively protecting it. Ash denies his suggestions, but Dallas remains suspicious.
• The removal of the entire Egg silo concept necessitated the deletion of another scene following the Alien's birth in which the crew would have analyzed the hieroglyphs found within the structure and determined that they showed the various stages of the Alien's life cycle. As they continued to study the strange pictograms, they would have realized that the next stage in the cycle would be the creation of more "spores", foreshadowing the scene where Ripley finds Dallas and Brett being turned into Eggs by the Alien.
• According to Harry Dean Stanton, Brett originally uttered several humorous lines while hunting for Jones in the landing claw chamber shortly before his death. Ultimately these was cut for fear they would break the tension that was building at that point.
  I had some funny lines when I went looking for the cat. Which was, in a way, more believable, because I was pissed off at them for having told me to find it in the first place. I started out with lines like, "Kitty, kitty, kitty", and worked my way to, "Fucking cat", and stuff like that...They didn't want any laughs in there because the suspense was building.
• Originally, Brett was going to be killed by the Alien when it plunged its inner jaw into his chest and tore out his heart. When he was found by the others, the wound would be similar to that on the Pilot they found aboard the derelict. The scene was altered when Scott decided it was too similar to Kane's demise, and in the changed version the Alien first lifts Brett up with its tail before slowly crushing his head with its hands. This take was actually filmed, but Scott decided it showed the audience too much of the Alien and so the sequence was changed yet again to have the creature quickly kill Brett with its inner jaw, as seen in the finished film. Interestingly, a brief shot of the Alien's tail passing between Brett's legs from the originally-filmed death scene was later reused during Lambert's death.
• A deleted scene was going to showcase "eggmorphing" as the Xenomorph's method of reproduction: transforming the living or dead flesh of captured humans into new Xenomorph eggs, which was to be the fate of both Brett and Dallas. In the decades since the scene was made public, both fans and creators have debated over whether eggmorphing or the Queen is a more terrifying explanation of where eggs come from, and some works (such as the Alien³ novelization) have suggested that the two methods both coexist.
• There was originally a subplot involving the master access key for Mother, which ensures only the most senior crewmember aboard can talk to the computer. In the first scene from this deleted subplot, Dallas was to hand the key to Ash before he enters the vents to try and flush out the Alien, instructing him to pass it on to Ripley should he fail to return. During the scene, Ash also asks the captain why he didn't let Ripley go into the vents (the implication being that he is aware she is suspicious of him, and was hoping the Alien would kill her). However, Dallas maintains that it is his responsibility.
• Scott planned to shoot footage of the Alien advancing on Dallas in the vents by rapidly bounding along the walls of the vent shaft, but the restrictive nature of the Alien suit meant that it wasn't filmed.
• After Dallas is killed, Ripley was to confront Ash about the missing computer access key, but Ash claims Dallas never handed it to him. This further fuels Ripley's suspicions of him, but without being able to access Mother, she is unable to check up on him.
• Despite the threat from the Alien, Ripley was to sneak alone down to Ash's science blister in search of the key, certain that he has hidden it there. She finds it, but is startled when Kane's corpse bangs against the window, having become caught in the antenna array outside. While the scene was never shot, the shroud that John Hurt was supposed to wear was created.
• During re-writes, Hill and Giler conceived an idea that the ship's own computer mainframe would have worked against the crew in their efforts to destroy the Alien. Although not actively hostile towards the surviving crewmembers, early drafts had Mother simply refusing to assist them in any way "in the interests of pure scientific research". Declaring the presence of the Alien "a chance to witness an evolutionary experiment", Mother was more interested in seeing which of the two sides would survive the confrontation and learning from this outcome than it was protecting the crew. The antagonistic role was later transferred to Ash, who was much less passive in his efforts against the crew.
• The key scene in which Ripley, Lambert and Parker confront Ash's remains was rewritten several times during development, each time adding or removing certain important dialogue points. Among the more interesting revelations that were removed from the final version of the scene include Ash pointing out that androids are surreptitiously placed aboard every deep-space ship, to ensure the crews retrieve for the company any "key products" that they may encounter. A later version has Ash state that the Alien will soon die of natural causes as its lifespan is very short; while Parker initially takes this as good news, Ripley realises the creature will quickly decompose and spill its acid blood, hulling the ship and decompressing the entire vessel. When she goes on to ask how Ash intends to return the Alien to Earth if it will soon expire, he reveals that while the Alien will die, the Eggs it has laid on the ship will survive, even in a vacuum. This would again have foreshadowed the deleted cocoon scene. In several alternate drafts, Ash asks the crew to reassemble him so that he can help them defeat the Alien, but they realize he cannot be trusted and refuse.
• Lambert's death was originally different than what was featured in the film (which reused a cut shot from Brett's death of the Alien's tail wrapping around his leg). Originally, an early draft of the script describes Lambert (named Melkonis at this stage) having her head twisted around and wrenched off by the Alien. A subsequent draft instead had the Alien capture Lambert alive, much like Dallas. Later, when Ripley encountered a cocooned Dallas in the Nostromo's hold, the captain told her that the Alien had eaten Lambert. Another script revision had Parker accidentally incinerate the navigator when he tried to kill the Alien with his flamethrower. Later, it was planned to have Lambert get sucked out into space piecemeal through a very small hole in the Nostromo's hull, but cost and special effects constraints rendered the sequence unfilmable. Eventually, it was decided that Lambert would crawl into a locker and die of fright when the Alien confronted her and Parker, but even this was changed when time ran out to film the necessary footage. In the final film, a combination of recycling unused footage (from Brett's original death scene) and sound effects were used to imply Lambert's death off-screen.
• During Ripley's first attempt at escaping, she was originally going to encounter a strange box in one of the ship's corridors. As she approached, the box was to unfold, revealing it to be the Alien. In the film, she merely encounters the Alien around a corner.
• After Ripley discovers the Alien has stowed away on the shuttle, the creature was to be seen approaching the locker in which she hides and leering at her through the small window in the door.[ As the production was critically short on time by this point, the sequence had to be dropped.
• Ash was originally going to be human.
• Walter Hill, who co-wrote the script, was going to direct at one point.
• Robert Aldrich was originally slated to direct, and his idea for the alien was to shave a real-life orangutan and have it play the role.
• The script was written gender-neutrally, meaning any of the characters could be any gender. Given Ripley's status as a feminist icon, a male Ripley would have certainly altered the series quite a bit.
• Two heads for the titular creature were constructed for use in the film - the one by Carlo Rambaldi that was cable-operated, the other by a technician who had helped out on A New Hope that was remotely controlled. The final product exclusively uses Rambaldi's head, as Scott decided there was no need for both to be used.

Aliens

• Stephen Lang, who'd later work with James Cameron on Avatar was considered for Carter Burke.
• Linda Blair was the first choice for Vasquez, but scheduling conflicts with Nightforce forced her to leave the movie.
• Early on, Sigourney Weaver was still reluctant to do a sequel. The studio asked Cameron to develop an alternate plot excluding Ripley just in case Weaver didn't sign on. Cameron refused, on the basis that the series is all about her.
• Cameron's original script was very different from the final film:
  • Carter Burke was absent, instead, his dialogue was given to someone named Dr. O'Niel, who did not join Ripley and the marines on their voyage to the colony planet.
  • Instead of being taken to the Gateway Station, Ripley was taken to Earth Station Beta.
  • The name of the colony planet was Acheron, taken from the script of Alien, instead of LV-426.
  • Ripley's daughter was alive, and Ripley had a disheartening videophone conversation with her, where she blamed Ripley for abandoning her by going to space.
  • There were multiple atmospheric processors on the planet.
  • The initial discovery of the aliens on the colony planet is much longer, where it is shown how Newt's father gets to the site of the eggs and is jumped by a facehugger.
  • An additional scene involves a rescue team going to the site of the alien eggs and being jumped by tens of facehuggers.
  • The aliens sting people to paralyze them before either killing or cocooning them. At one point Ripley, Newt and Hicks all get cocooned. The aliens cocooning people would have been a different breed, looking like smaller, albino versions of the warrior aliens.
  • Bishop refuses to land on the planet and pick up Ripley, Hicks and Newt, indicating "the risk of contaminating other inhabited worlds is too great." Ripley ends up using the colonists' shuttle to get back to the Sulaco. Bishop even tells her: "You were right about me all along."
• The opening sequence showing the recovery of the Narcissus was originally longer, beginning with the salvage vessel scanning the shuttle with a large searchlight as it approached.
• In early drafts, Ripley's nightmare aboard Gateway Station was markedly different. Instead of imagining a Chestburster emerging from her body, she instead found herself back aboard the Nostromo, running through the ship's corridors in a desperate attempt to flee the vessel. She stops at a hatch and opens it, only to see the Alien rising in the darkness within, at which point she would have woken screaming aboard Gateway.
• The revelation that the woodland aboard Gateway is in fact virtual reality was originally going to occur when Jones attempts to kill a bird flitting around on the screen. Instead he slams into the wall, leading Ripley to call him, "Dumbshit."
• A brief additional scene found in early drafts of the script has Burke attempting to reassure Ripley as they walk to the hearing aboard Gateway. After pointing out that there are going to be powerful people present, Burke tells her the most important thing is for her to simply stay cool While the scene was dropped, Burke's dialogue about the company heavyweights at the meeting was combined with the earlier scene where Ripley learns of her daughter's fate.
• After Newt's father is subdued by a Facehugger, it was originally planned to show a rescue team arriving from the colony in response to her mother's distress call. They were to head inside the derelict ship, discovering the remains of the Pilot (now partially buried by volcanic debris), before descending into the cargo hold and themselves being subdued by multiple Facehuggers. This was cut due to budget limitations.
• An advertisement promoting off-world colony life was to be seen playing in Ripley's apartment just before Burke and Gorman come to visit.
• The script contained a scene where the men and women of the Colonial Marines would be seen showering together aboard the Sulaco after waking from hypersleep, similar to Starship Troopers. The footage was never shot because the actresses were unwilling to appear nude in the film.
• In the script, Bishop's manufacturer is said to be Cyberdyne Systems. This was changed for filming to the less on-the-nose Hyperdyne Systems.
• The briefing that Ripley gives to the Marines aboard the Sulaco was slightly longer, with Ripley referring to the Facehugger as "essentially a walking sex organ", to which Hudson quips, "Sounds like you, Hicks".
• The script contained a brief scene of Bishop piloting the Sulaco into orbit around LV-426.
• In the script, the main entrance to the colony is blocked off by tractors, positioned there by the colonists in an attempt to keep the Xenomorphs out.
• In the script, Ripley cannot bring herself to leave the APC when Gorman, Burke and Bishop enter the colony, and returns to sit by herself inside the armored vehicle. However, she quickly decides being alone is even worse; she climbs out to follow the others, but the colony access lock shuts just in front of her, trapping her outside. Unable to open it or alert those already inside, she begins to panic when suddenly Wierzbowski appears behind her, scaring her. Apologizing, the Private reveals Hicks asked him to "keep an eye" on her, after which he opens the door to let them both inside.
• In the script, Gorman is not incapacitated by falling crates, but rather he is stung and paralyzed by a Xenomorph — as the APC prepares to escape the Atmosphere Processor, one of the creatures jumps onto the vehicle and rips away a hatch that Gorman is cowering beside, pulling him partially out and stinging him in the shoulder with its barb-tipped tail. Hicks mans the APC's turret gun and blows the Xenomorph away before the others pull Gorman back inside.
• The famous "Game over, man!" line was originally "Just tell me what the fuck we're supposed to do now? What're we gonna do now?"
• Originally, the scene where the survivors speculate on the presence of a Queen began with Bishop offering some insight into Gorman's condition.
• While theorizing about the resident Queen, the script contains an interesting line of dialogue from Bishop in which he suggests she may have intentionally selected the Atmosphere Processor for her Hive because she recognized the protection it offers her — within the volatile structure, she cannot be destroyed without also destroying the entire colony.
• While traveling through the conduit, Bishop was supposed to encounter a Xenomorph through a crack in the side of the pipe. It lunges at him, but when he does not react, it loses interest.
• The script contains a slightly more complex version of the air duct escape from Operations, in which the fleeing survivors find themselves cut off by more Xenomorphs up ahead. Trapped between two groups of the creatures, Hicks has to cut his way out of the vent shaft with his cutting torch.
• The script features an additional type of Xenomorph dubbed "Drones", described as being white and smaller than the regular Drones (labelled Warriors in the script). These creatures tend to the Queen in the Hive. Ripley encounters them in the Queen's chamber while rescuing Newt, but they completely ignore her as they go about their duties. They were dropped from the movie prior to filming, likely due to budget and/or effects constraints.
• Before Ripley confronts the Queen in the Power Loader, a sequence originally showed her strapping into the suit, similar to that seen earlier in the film when she helps to move supplies aboard the Sulaco.
• Weyland-Yutani, who contribute just as much to the series' mythology than the Xenomorph (if not more), were written out of Cameron's original treatment. A throwaway line would've revealed they were bought out and shut down. Who can imagine how the franchise would have evolved without the cartoonishly evil Company and its numerous ill-advised attempts to capture a Xenomorph?
• id Software was in negotiations to make a game based on this film, but pulled out because they wanted full creative control - a decision that worked out pretty well.
• The iconic power loader was supposed to be a quadrupedal mech, but Cameron decided it looked too much like an AT-AT and made it bipedal instead.

Alien³

• Ridley Scott was contacted and would've returned if he wasn't so busy. Richard Donner was also approached to direct.
• The film went through several writers, including William Gibson, Eric Red, David Twohy (who would later use some of the script he had written for Pitch Black) and Vincent Ward, before the final shooting script was thrown together using parts of all the previous drafts (mainly the latter three). Summaries of each can be found at The Other Wiki.
  • Gibson's script starts out with a commando team boarding the Sulaco and getting attacked by facehuggers while attempting to rescue Ripley and the survivors from Aliens. The film would then follow Hicks and a newly-reconstructed Bishop on the Anchorpoint space station as they attempt to stop a series of biological experiments done by an USSR-analogue that opposed the corporations, continuing on from the second film's Vietnam-allegory. The experiments would have used Alien DNA to change anyone infected by it into an alien Super-Soldier, and in addition, the virus would then somehow make the jump to mechanical and computer systems and turn an entire space station into a giant Xenomorph. Ripley would be in a coma for most of the film (after having her cryosleep interrupted by the alien attack in the opening sequence, about the only thing this version has in common with the final film) and would be sent away on a lifeboat. They would escape with a group of survivors, Newt would go to live with her grandparents on Earth. For interested parties, the full version of Gibson's first draft can be found here, and Dark Horse Comics' 2019 adaptation here. Gibson noted that the only part of his script that made it into the final film was his use of the Scannable Man trope.
  • Eric Red's script would have started similarly, with a commando team boarding the Sulaco, but they would have found everyone (including Ripley) dead. The rest of the film would have taken place in what appeared a small town in the U.S., where an all-out battle would rage between the townsfolk and the xenomorphs. In a plot twist later in the film, it turned out that the "town" was actually part of a biodome in space, and the rest of the storyline was pretty much a rehash of the "Alien virus" idea in Gibson's script.
  • David Twohy's script featured a "prison planet" idea, but would have had the inmates being experimented on with biological agents (much like Gibson's script), and an inmate named Styles attempting to escape the planet. Twohy got to bring his prison planet to life years and years later in part of The Chronicles of Riddick.
  • Finally, Vincent Ward's spec script would have had Ripley crashland on a "wooden planet", actually a kind of deliberately primitive space station (the people who built and live in it shunned technology; the tech necessary for it to function would be deep in the core and analogous to Hell, especially once the Alien starts nesting there). It was populated by a group of monks who would see her as a temptress and the alien as an incarnation of the devil. She would find Newt's tattered clothing at one point in the film, and it would climax with the final surviving monk giving Ripley a CPR exorcism in order to drive the chestburster out of her body and into his, sacrificing himself in the process. There would also be a scene where some of the monks are using the communal toilets (which have no doors, so that they might talk to each other), and one of them would have been eaten by an alien who came out of the toilet. The whole thing was heavily inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and, if the concept art seen in the special edition DVD is any indication, it would have been a perfect storm of terror.
• What eventually got released as the Assembly Cut was in fact the first cut of the film. The reason why it was trimmed down into what became the theatrical cut was that various special effects were not finished and certain sequences still needed work in post - and there was time for neither, due to the upcoming release date, enforcing a hack job in editing. While the Assembly Cut has its own issues, it is generally seen as superior to the theatrical one.
• The role of Clemens was written for Richard E. Grant, in the hopes of reuniting him with his Withnail and I co-stars Paul McGann and Ralph Brown. Gabriel Byrne was also offered the role.
• The Xenomorph was originally going to have human-like lips and kill its victims by kissing them. Amusingly, Fincher stated that Michelle Pfeiffer inspired that bit of creature design.
• In at least one of the shooting script's many alternate drafts, Hicks is killed in his hypersleep tube when a Chestburster erupts from his body. In this version of events, it is the emerging Chestburster that starts the electrical fire on board, having damaged Hicks' cryotube.
• Early drafts of the shooting script include a more elaborate EEV crash sequence, in which the death of Hicks is actually depicted on-screen. After hitting the ocean, the damaged pod sinks rapidly into the depths, the pressure eventually crushing it and causing a support beam to fail and impale the sleeping Corporal. Air bags eventually deploy on the escape pod's exterior and bring the crippled craft back to the surface, but not before the water pressure beaches the hull and floods the interior.
• In the original script, it is Newt who is impregnated by a Facehugger aboard the Sulaco, not Ripley. When Newt subsequently begins to drown on Fiorina 161, the embryonic Xenomorph was to switch hosts, emerging from Newt's mouth and entering Ripley. The entire concept was dropped before filming, likely to both simplify the Queen Chestburster's origins and to maintain the surprise when Ripley discovers she is impregnated later in the film.
• One draft of the film's shooting script had the above switching of hosts visualized in the form of a nightmare experienced by Ripley before she is revived by the prison staff where she staggers around the damaged interior of the EEV following the crash and finds Newt's cryotube. As she approaches, Newt suddenly sits upright and spews Xenomorph slime all over Ripley, after which the infant Queen within pushes up through her throat and begins clambering out of her mouth. As the small creature pulls itself free, Newt smiles at a horrified Ripley.
• Among the new creature designs created by H. R. Giger for the movie was that of an "aquatic Facehugger", to be seen swimming ashore following the EEV crash at the beginning of the film. While the sequence was never filmed, it seems likely the webbed digits on the Royal Facehugger from the Special Edition were inspired by Giger's design.
• Another cut dream sequence featured in the script involves Ripley, armed with a flamethrower, being stalked by a Xenomorph in the Sulaco's hypersleep bay. As she searches for the creature, she notices its tail creeping up between her legs (much like Lambert in Alien) and before she can run it grabs her from behind, pins her atop one of the cryotubes and begins to rape her.
• One draft of the script features a brief added moment before Ripley wakes up in which Golic spies on Clemens tending to her through a nearby window. When the doctor turns around, Golic has disappeared.
• A scripted scene that would have introduced several of the background prisoners showed Troy, Martin, David, Arthur and Morse working in the lead foundry, using the prison's oxen to haul carts of ore from the underground tunnels. As they work, they discuss whether to attend the impending funeral for Newt and Hicks, at which point Dillon and Junior arrive, with Dillon informing the prisoners that they will all be going to the funeral to pay their respects.
• One draft had Ripley find Newt's doll Casey in the EEV wreckage (despite the fact it was left behind on LV-426 in Aliens), and during the funeral service for Hicks and Newt she throws it into the furnace after the bodies.
• One scene scripted but later discarded involved Andrews, Aaron, Dillon and Morse going into the tunnels in search of Boggs and Rains after Golic has been restrained. Although they find no bodies, they do discover scratch marks on the walls, as well as a large amount of human blood. Looking up, they see more blood dripping from an overhead vent, and surmise something has carried the dead men's remains up there. Dillon and Morse immediately begin to suspect Ripley is telling the truth about the Alien, but Andrews stubbornly refuses to accept anyone (or anything) other than Golic was responsible.
• Rex Pickett's rewrite completely changed Clemens' backstory and reason for being on Fiorina. Instead of killing several injured workers with an accidental overdose of painkillers, he tells Ripley that he euthanized a woman — along with her unborn child — when a terrible accident left her in a coma with no chance of recovery. He then reveals that the woman was his wife. Subsequent drafts reverted to the original story eventually used in the film.
• Originally, the extensive bait-and-chase sequence that ends the film was to take place in the middle of the movie — it was the means by which the inmates try to lure the Dragon into the toxic waste dump, instead of lighting a quinitricetyline fire to drive it into the silo. As in the finished film, many of the prisoners are killed in the process, but the plan succeeds and the Dragon is trapped. In this version of the story, there is no similar chase at the end of the film, and instead the last survivors — Ripley and Aaron — find the Dragon has made its nest in the lead works and confront it there.
• An extended version of Ripley's scan in the EEV appears in one draft, in which Aaron zooms in on the infant Queen growing inside Ripley, revealing thousands of microscopic Eggs already developing insider her.
• Before the script was altered to have Golic die when he frees the Dragon from captivity, he originally survived the incident, with the Xenomorph simply running past him when he opened the waste tank door. Following this, he spies on Ripley when she scans herself inside the wrecked EEV. When he sees the Chestburster she is carrying on the monitor, he grins.
• Originally, after learning that the Xenomorph is loose once more, William, Eric, Christopher and another inmate gather in the abattoir, where they plan to hold out until rescue can arrive. They reason that the room has no ventilation shafts from which the Dragon can attack, and they also spread disinfectant used to kill the planet's insect life around the doors, surmising that the Alien is "a bug" and won't come near it. However, when some of the lights in the room start to go out, Eric and Christopher go to investigate. As he waits for them to return, William turns to the inmate with him and finds him lying dead, his throat cut, and Golic standing over his corpse holding a bloody knife. Before William can raise the alarm Golic stabs him in the heart, and then heads off to get the others.
• A substantial sequence cut before filming showed how the Xenomorph built a Hive within the prison's assembly hall, wherein it cocooned many of its victims alive, presumably ready to be hosts once the Queen matured and began laying Eggs. Dillon and Morse were to find the Hive and the numerous prisoners cocooned there, including Andrews, who begs to be killed. Dillon sets the Hive alight with a flare, incinerating the cocooned men, only to discover the Dragon was hiding overhead all along when it screeches loudly. Dillon pushes Morse through a door and locks it behind him, before turning to face the Xenomorph alone, praying softly. Ripley and Aaron arrive alongside Morse, alerted by the fire alarm, but are unable to get through the door and can only watch as the Dragon kills Dillon (he died far earlier in this draft of the script) and drags his body away into an air shaft. While the sequence was never filmed, at least two of the cocoons were partially constructed.
• Following on from the revised version of Golic's murderous rampage, Ripley, Aaron, Dillon and Morse were to discover the scene of his killings in the abattoir, along with the traumatized Eric, who has survived the ordeal.[9] They also find Babe's eviscerated corpse, Ripley noting that "this is where it started". Continuing to explore the scene, they find Golic cocooned to a wall by the Dragon, still alive and muttering that he is sorry for what he has done.
• In early version of the script, it is Morse, not Aaron, who declines to take part in the final battle with the Dragon. As a result, it is he who meets the Weyland-Yutani team that arrives to recover the creature.
• During the bait-and-chase sequence, Jude slips on something wet, and when he realizes it is the remains of a fellow inmate he begins screaming.
• One draft had the Weyland-Yutani science team met by Golic, who promises to take them to Ripley and leads them through the abattoir, which is still littered with the bodies of the prisoners he killed earlier. Michael Bishop asks Golic where the other inmates are, and Golic responds that the Dragon killed most of them, before asking if Bishop has anything to eat. When the film was rewritten to have Golic dead before the company team arrives, it became Aaron who met them. However, the scene originally featured extra dialogue removed from both cuts of the movie. After greeting Aaron, the scientist asks him if he has seen the beast. Aaron confirms that he has, before explaining that Ripley has one inside her. Bishop, his face shrouded in shadow, says, "We know that." After the men in the background put down the cage, Aaron tells them, "You're gonna need a bigger cage than that"
• One draft had the Queen Chestburster erupt from Ripley while she is still standing on the gantry considering her options. She grapples with the creature and snaps its neck before they both topple backwards into the furnace.
• A whole ensemble of Alien born from barnyard animals were even planned, including an alien sheep covered in gore-matted wool.
• Dillon, Aaron, and Golic all had different deaths at one point:
  • Dillon was originally going to be killed early into the third act after Golic lets the Alien out, the prisoners discover that the Alien had transformed either the Assembly Hall, the Cone of Silence, or the abattoir into a new nest, with a barely alive Andrews and Golic cocooned. Dillon would mercy kill them, only for the Alien to show up and drag him away. A head mould of Charles S. Dutton was made for this scene, as well as set pieces for cocoons and the Alien's secreted 'improvements' to the set, but David Fincher felt that Dillon was too important to kill at this point, so the scene was scrapped early on. His other death was to be killed by the Alien at the end of a version the bait and chase sequence in which Aaron actually took part in, but failed. His death that almost made it into the film and was in the novelization and comic adaptation was to escape the lead mould with Ripley and watch as the Alien is drowned in lead, the company arrives and Ripley demands him to kill her, but he can't bring himself to do it, only for the Alien to jump out of the mould and kill him.
  • Aaron's original death was exactly like Dillon's death in all final versions, where he would sacrifice himself for Ripley's escape and too keep the Alien in the lead mould and die fighting it off, this was given to Dillon in the final version. The second take on his death was when the company arrived, when the Asian scientist asks Aaron if he has seen the beast, he admits that he has, and Weyland then gives the order for the troops to kill him on the spot. It was changed and decided to give Aaron a more heroic, bittersweet death.
  • Golic originally lived much longer, essentially serving as The Renfield to the Alien's Dracula. In an early draft, after the company kills Aaron, they run into him and he agrees to take them to "the Dragon", after asking them for something to eat. He was originally going to kill Weyland by slamming Dillon's fire axe into his head, after which he would be shot to death by the troopers. Another death, which got farther along, was that Golic would attempt to murder Gregor, William, and Eric (who decided to take their chances outside in suits), but fails and is dragged away by the Alien. They later find him cocooned up, apologizing for everything he's done before Dillon mercy kills him.
  • Weyland aka Bishop II was supposed to die as well, as Golic's hands. Ripley's exchanges would have been with Matshuria, the Asian scientist who goes unnamed in the final film, but it was changed to have Weyland live, since the pleads to spare the Alien would have meant more from him.
• The chestburster was also supposed to burst out of an ox (rather than a dog) to set up the idea the Alien takes on the traits of its host (as this Alien walks on all fours). However, the creature very obviously moves quickly like a dog, since it was played by a whippet in an alien costume. The scene was almost impossible to film from the front because the dog did not agree with having its face completely concealed with an alien mask, and it looked very silly. The Director's Cut of the film included on more recent boxsets has the Alien bursting from an ox as originally intended. In either case, seeing the animal suffer makes for a very disturbing scene.
• The autopsy scene was a lot more detailed than appears in the finished film. A rough cut of the scene had so much gore, it made some crew members that had worked on it throw up and nearly slapped the movie with an NC-17 rating.
• The scene of Ripley and the Alien in the basement was originally longer, it would back her up into the wall and she would demand it to kill her, they were to stare each other down until the Alien ran off, leaving Ripley alone. This was shot, as several trading cards provide shots from it, but it's mysteriously absent in any version of the film.
• Alan Dean Foster, who was hired to write the novelization (and had done the novelizations of the previous two films), disliked the killing Newt off and tried to turn his adaptation into a Fix Fic where she survives, albeit in a coma for the entire story. After Fox pushed back and told him to keep the story consistent with the movie, he declined to write any more novelizations for the franchise, and author A.C. Crispin wrote the novelization for Alien: Resurrection instead.
• According to an extremely early teaser trailer made and released before the script was even written, this sequel would have had the Xenomorphs ending up on Earth and wreaking havoc on a major city, likely NYC, and would have come out in 1992. This idea likely became Predator 2 and would be poorly revisited with Requiem.

Alien: Resurrection

• Danny Boyle was Fox's first choice to direct. Boyle later said he thought Joss Whedon's script was brilliant, but didn't trust the studio to give him creative freedom. He ultimately turned down the film in order to make A Life Less Ordinary. Peter Jackson was asked to direct, but declined as he could not get excited about an Alien film. David Cronenberg was an early choice to direct but later passed. Terry Gilliam and Bryan Singer were also approached.
• William H. Macy auditioned for Dr. Geidman. During the audition with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, he felt the scene he was reading was so ridiculous, he said "You know what guys, This is never going to happen," got up and left the room.
• Joss Whedon wrote Christie with Chow Yun-fat in mind. Yun-Fat's manager and producer Terence Chang turned down the role for him.
• Dr. Wren was written to be played by Bill Murray, in the hopes of reuniting him with Sigourney Weaver since Ghostbusters II.
• The role of Call was written for Angelina Jolie but she turned it down.
• Should Sigourney Weaver not come back as Ripley, the other idea for the film would be to have a clone of Newt as the protagonist instead.
• The climax would have actually taken place on Earth, and instead of the Newborn there was a massive white-colored Alien. Whedon wrote five drafts of this, but Fox didn't want them so they wrote the eventual third act without his input. There is an alternate version of the ending where the crew land on Earth, and the final dialogue is exchanged near the ruins of Paris.
• Concept art of the Newborn showed it resembling Sigourney Weaver's face. This was abandoned, as the film Species had used a similar idea.
• Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally wanted to cast a woman as the main villain, but the studio refused, seeing as the film already had two female leads.
• The Newborn had both male and female genitals during filming, but were digitally edited out at the orders of the studio.
• There were a whole load of ideas by both Whedon and Jeunet that didn't make the final script (details can be found here). Some of them were retained in the novelization and comic book versions.
  • Christie in the final film is a composite of the original Christie (tall calm black warrior guy) and a character called St. Just (hedonistic Asian fancy gunslinger).
  • The characters who made it to the final were originally very different. Hillard was older and tougher, and effectively became the leader of the crew of the Betty after Elgyn's death. There was also a rookie character on the Betty called Rane, and another USM soldier taken hostage with DiStephano. Vriess was more congenial, Call was less vulnerable, General Perez was much more badass and less of a ditz, and mostly significantly Ripley actually became more humanlike throughout the story to the point that she had no connection or sympathy toward the aliens by the end, unlike the finished film.
  • The film was going to open with a surreal nightmare, very in the style of director Jeunet, with a child version of Ripley and her mom in a wheat field, during which the girl would find herself suddenly alone and swarmed by bugs and a sea of blood.
  • The surgery to remove the chestburster was going to be done with remotely operated mechanical arms, but Jeunet changed it to human surgeons because it would be too expensive to recreate.
  • Jeunet also wanted to include a scene where a mosquito would bite Ripley 8 and then be dissolved from the acid in her blood, but again, he had to drop the idea when the SFX team told him how much the necessary CGI would cost.
  • Extra scenes of the Aliens rampaging through the Auriga and strategically attacking the soldiers' barracks were originally included.
  • Several scientists were going to appear coccooned to the walls and killed by their chestbursters. They were replaced by dead bodies lying on the floor in the final film.
  • A scene had the group finding a pack of Aliens, which Wren suggested to lure to the containment cells and kill by using the freeze jets. However, the Aliens realized the trap and didn't bite, after which Ripley 8 would coldly suggest to sacrifice a party member as a living bait, leading to a heated argument with guns being drawn. The Aliens attacked them, allowing Wren to use successfully the jets, and Ripley explained she caused the argument intentionally because Aliens would attack upon sensing their fear.
  • Perez was supposed to die by being sucked through a hole in the side of his ship. Blood from a Xenomorph that is killed during the evacuation of the Auriga splatters on one of the ship's windows, and Peréz is gruesomely sucked out through the opening until all that remains is his skull, with air continuing to rush out through his evacuated eye socket. Several nearby soldiers cling to the walls and floor against the depressurization until a watch one of them is wearing is torn free and flies across the room, blocking the socket in Peréz's skull and sealing the hull breach. Jeunet felt this was too spectacular for such a minor character, and so that death was given to the Newborn instead. Perez's actual death was almost cut, as the studio disliked it, but kept in after test audiences responded favourably to it.
  • There was a sequence where the survivors drove a jeep through the Auriga's botanical garden complex while being attacked on all sides by Aliens hiding in the undergrowth. They only escaped thanks to a You Shall Not Pass! by a wounded St. Just, who breached the wall and depressurized the entire chamber to take the Aliens with him. Conceptual art of the scene was released, and the whole premise was later reused in the sequel novel Aliens: Original Sin.
  • The Newborn was originally going to be a bloodsucking, spider-like creature with mouth pincers otherwise resembling more the classical Alien. Gediman, whom the Aliens had been draining from his blood through wounds in his feet, was killed by it in the Hive. It was also meant to survive the Auriga crash by clinging to the hull of the Betty to some snowy mountains of the Earth, after which it would head for a nearby city with Ripley chasing it. She would be overpowered, but Call would come to the rescue in a salvaged, levitating harvesting vehicle, which they used to shred the creature and blow it up. This was all discarded when the budget ran out, but reportedly some footage with the harvester was actually filmed.

Prequel series

Alien: Engineers (unfilmed Prometheus script)

• The original draft of what would become Prometheus was Jon Spaihts' 2009 script, Alien: Engineers. It was far more closely tied to set the movie up as a direct prequel to Alien while still allowing for a sequel departing from it as Scott had always wished. The main cause of the film's massive rewrite was Scott's decision to hire Damon Lindelof (the writer for Lost) to review the script, leading to their joint decision to remove the direct connections to Alien and revamp the story as something different.
• Aside from Spaiths' title, other titles considered were Alien: Genesis, Alien: LV-426, and Alien: Origins.
• The story of Alien: Engineers was substantially different from Prometheus.
  • In this version, the Engineer's sacrifice was not done in order to generate life in a prebiotic Earth, but to infuse his DNA on human cavemen around 12,000 BC; the Earth's biosphere was either natural or separately terraformed by them. The black goo was absent, and the sacrifice was performed with black scarab-like bugs who ate the Engineer alive. As a last touch, the Engineers in this version were much bigger, matching the original Space Jockey at around fifteen feet tall, and were earless.
  • Weyland Corp was instead Weyland Industries, the Prometheus was called the Magellan, and the setting would have been the original LV-426, the moon from the first film, instead of LV-223.
  • Shaw was named Jocelyn Watts, while Holloway's first name was Martin instead of Charlie. Chance and Ravel were technicians, not pilots. There was also a new character, Shepherd, who was a Weyland mercenary woken up by Vickers who later joined the leads. Peter Weyland never got aboard the Magellan, with the role of main antagonist being played by David.
  • The astronaut suits used by the crew would have been white, not blue. Also, the Magellan was not composed of a single, unified ship, but a collection of modules that could be independently operated (a bit of which was retained with Vickers' chambers in Prometheus).
  • The script averted most of the Idiot Ball moments introduced in the rewrite, most eminently regarding Fifield and Millburn. In this version, Fifield was not in charge of mapping the Engineer facility, and both he and Millburn had forgotten their wrist computers, explaining how they got lost. Similarly, Janek could not have them watched over the radio because signal was completely lost. (Millburn's idiotical decision to play with an alien worm was already there, though.) Many other moments were absent as well.
  • Fifield in this version was infected by the mentioned black scarabs, which turned him into a hulking Xenomorph/human hybrid with a massive Healing Factor who could break a Xenomorph's neck one-handed. Surprisingly enough, this version of him could talk and was implied to retain a lot of his intelligence. Vickers was killed by acid from his wounds, while Fifield was later killed himself by Watts via rounds to the head, his only weak spot.
  • The Engineer buildings in LV-426 were terraforming machines, which Vickers and her team sought to dismantle and retro-engineer in order to help Weyland Industries' endeavor to terraform Mars. Notably, their inner chambers were revealed to be not gloomy and empty, but actually filled with secret holograms and light systems only Engineer eyes (and David's) could see.
  • The film would have included more elements from the Alien franchise, featuring regular Xenomorphs and other variations created by the Engineers. This included the Octo-Facehugger, which would give birth to a "Beluga-Xenomorph" very similar to the Neomorph from Covenant. Instead of the Deacon alien, a Xenomorph over sixteen feet tall, the Ultramorph, was supposed emerge from the Engineer. Also, Holloway would have died via chestburster while having sex with Watts.
  • The Engineer actually fought with weapons, killing several crewmembers with some kind of alien guns. He didn't initially wear his species bio-armor, which was instead fitted on him by one of his machines.
  • The script left unknown why did the Engineers want to destroy humanity, and it was only mentioned that their plan was apparently developed around 1700 years before the film's date (which makes it incompatible with the reason given in the later Prometheus script). David offered Watts to help her rebuild his body in order to get out of the planet, but she didn't immediately accept his offer, and the film ended with the Engineers facilities sending an automatic signal to their homeworld, implying they would come by themselves to the planet.

Prometheus

• Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman, Gemma Arterton, Carey Mulligan, and Abbie Cornish were all considered for Elizabeth Shaw.
• Michelle Yeoh and Angelina Jolie were considered for Meredith Vickers.
• Guy Pearce was originally supposed to play Peter Weyland solely as a young man, while Max von Sydow would play him as an old man. Scott also considered Rutger Hauer as an old Peter Weyland as well.
• James Franco was considered for Charlie Holloway. He wound up getting cast in the sequel.
• The film was going to be titled Paradise, in a reference to John Milton's, Paradise Lost, but Scott thought it revealed too much about the plot. Fox CEO Tom Rothman suggested Prometheus instead, and Scott liked it enough to use it.
• Like Engineers, the initial Prometheus script contained tons of exposition that explained most of the film's mysteries, as well as scenes that justified the Idiot Ball of many characters and gave them reasons to act the way they act through the film. It was Scott who elected to cut most of them against Lindelof's wishes.
  • Unlike the final cut of Prometheus, this version of the story did have a connection to the original Alien film. Weyland revealed he founded the mission to LV-223 not because he believed Shaw's and Holloway's theories, but because his corporation had picked up the warning signal of the LV-426 moon and recognized it as an alien call. The hologram David activated had the Engineers talking about the crashed Space Jockey ship, commenting that it contained "Planet Seeders" and that the pilot had idiotically gone Zombie Infectee after being attacked by one while checking up the cargo.
  • In this version of the film, David was modelled after a young Weyland, implying they were going to be played by the same actor (with the presumable exception of his old version). Weyland himself was going to appear several times speaking holographically to David and Vickers, though leaving for the end the revelation that he was not talking to them from Earth, but from the ship itself.
  • David's god complex is hinted to start when Shaw makes him read the Bible during the long travel to the planet. This drives him to read all the other religious texts of humanity, and makes him conclude that humans are violent and hypocritical.
  • Holloway is portrayed much more negatively than in the final cut, as he originally had countless moments of being a jerkass towards David, openly discriminating against him for being an android, which plays a role in David poisoning him. Holloway's relationship with Shaw is more disfunctional, as he also mocks Shaw's goals and existential doubts when drunk, to the point she physically attacks him while he is ranting against her. David is also clearly infatuated with Shaw, adding a motivation of jealously to his actions.
  • On the other hand, Vickers is a much more sympathetic character. She considers Weyland ignorant and arrogant for his god delusions, and hates him not only for his whimsical management of the corporation, but also because he had effectively replaced her with David in all of his family photos, not even bothering to hide the notion that she was worthless to him next to David. Vickers also strikes a true bond with Janek instead of mere flirting, as he comforts her when he sees her crying after a holographic reunion with Weyland. When she urges Janek to return to Earth rather than ramming the Engineer ship, it is because she believes the Earth's defense systems will shoot it down.
  • The idiocy of the scientific crewmen is justified because Vickers was the one who hired them, and it is implied that she handpicked deliberately the least competent scientists in order for Weyland's quest to fail. Both Janek and a mercenary lieutenant named Jackson deduce this, with the latter even being shocked that a biologist like Millburn could be "dumber than a swamp rat". It is also revealed that Fifield is psychologically unstable due to trauma received in other missions.
  • Holloway takes off his helmet not just because the air was merely breathable, but because they found proof that the Engineers facilities were part of an ancient terraforming project, which makes him assume the Engineers had ensured there were no dangerous organisms or pathogens in the air. His decision is still reckless, but not as much as in the final film.
  • Amusingly, when Fifield and Millburn find Engineer corpses with chestburster wounds, he wonders if they were shot with "Predator cannons", probably a reference to the Predator franchise and its plasma caster. Having in account Scott's ill opinion of the Alien vs. Predator movie and the measures he took to make it incompatible with Prometheus, this line may imply Predator is a Show Within a Show here.
  • Fifield and Millburn get lost in the ruins because the place's atmosphere made Fifield's wrist computer lose signal, thus explaining why he could not simply check up the map to find the way out or being easily contacted by Janek. Also, Millburn starts petting the dangerous Hammerpede not for the kicks, but because he claims to have experience working with snakes back in Earth (though he is still meant to be an idiot, as established above, for believing an alien creature would behave like an animal from Earth).
  • Instead of simply dying by the Hammerpede, Millburn mutates too, possibly due to the beastie rather than the black goo, and he becomes a pathetic, fetus-like giant that gets burned to death while trying to hug a scared Janek. Similarly, Fifield's mutated form looked less like a malformed Frankenstein and more like a cross between a man and a Xenomorph, with atrophied eyes and an elongated head (which was how they filmed it initially), and the script states this was the next step of evolution the Engineers had planned for humanity. The sequence when he kills crewmen was much gorier, even cannibalizing one of them at one point, and it was located later in the story, while Weyland and company are leaving for the facility (which again can still be seen in the filmed scene, where one of the vehicles drives away before It cuts).
  • The Engineers here were much taller than in the final film, correctly matching the fossilized pilot from Alien at 13-15 feet tall, and they had a Barbie Doll Anatomy, having lost their ability to reproduce at some moment of their history. Their lifespan was mentioned to be at six figures, though they eventually reached at some point a state where even talking took out centuries of life from them.
  • The history of the Engineers would also have been explained by David by reading their signs. Apparently, the Engineers had worked around their mentioned infertility thanks to the Deacon, who was spawned out of a chosen member of their race (though clarifying they didn't create the original species, only found it). The Deacon's blood allowed them to manipulate and create life in other planets hoping to create a new paradise to start again, and therefore they worshipped him as their "Lord" until he died and stopped producing blood. The black liquid was apparently a semi-successful attempt to recreate its blood, while the Xenomorph or "Planet Seeder" was a failed attempt to recreate the Deacon itself.
  • Although it is ambiguous whether it would have been subtitled for the audience, the Engineer's plans towards Earth were revealed too in the dialogue with the last of them. After creating humanity, Engineers were upset at seeing that humans were war-like and violent, so they descended as gods to "save their souls". As it didn't work, they then took a human child (not named, but obviously Jesus), taught him the value of life, and send it back to preach it, only to see humans punishing him. Now angry at this, the Engineers decided to wipe out humanity to start life over again on Earth, which they called "Rapture". However, either the black goo or the Xenomorph race escaped their control, and the rest is history.
  • The fall of the Engineer ship and Vicker's death happens in a different way, not the one portrayed in the film where Vickers looks like an idiot by trying to outrun the rolling spaceship.
  • The Deacon scene originally showed it leaving the module and purposefully striding out towards the wrecked Engineer ship (not unlike the original ending to Alien where the creature impersonated Ripley), thus possibly implying it was intelligent. However, the script also contained an additional epilogue that connected the film to Prometheus 2: it had Shaw waking up on the second Engineer ship, with a only half-rebuilt David piloting, to discover that they had finally reached the Engineer homeworld. The last line was David announcing her presence was required outside.
• Scott and his designers idly discussed adding some references to Blade Runner into the film, such as "Weyland-Tyrell" markings on some products aboard the ship, but it never went anywhere. Some of the extra material on the DVD actually does make a disguised reference to Tyrell and replicants, but according to the producers, you shouldn't take it too seriously.
• Some drafts of the script had a scene, on a colony on Mars, where Peter Weyland had his office. Though concept art was completed, the scene was removed for pacing reasons and never filmed.

Alien: Covenant

• Ridley Scott and Damon Lindeloff originally intended the Prometheus series to distance itself even further from the Alien series, exploring Shaw's and David's adventures seeking the Engineer homeworld. Scott retracted this idea and sought to tie the sequel back into the Alien saga — with his proposed prequel to Alien: Covenant, Alien: Awakening being a direct prequel... but Covenant's lacklustre reception has put the series' future in question.
• Composer Harry Gregson-Williams (who also worked with Ridley Scott before on projects like Kingdom of Heaven and The Martian) was chosen to do the film's music but left due to Creative Differences and scheduling issues. Jed Kurzel (Macbeth 2015, Assassin's Creed (2016)) is now doing the score instead.
• In an interview, Scott stated that initially the Engineers were going to be the creators of the Xenomorphs, with David trying to reproduce their work by hybridizing different Neomorph strains — which is retained in the novelization — and the Xenomorphs that appeared were biomechanical. However, late in development he thought it would be more interesting if David was the sole creator of the species, and deliberately removed the biomechanical features from the film's Xenomorph.
• Concept art for the film shows Shaw having been transformed by David's experiments into a "Neomorph Queen" — a pale-skinned humanoid creature with a naked female lower body, a genderless torso with protruding shoulders, arms with elbow-spikes and fused fingers, and an eyeless mushroom-shaped head.
• In earlier drafts of the film the Neomorph and Xenomorph were going to fight, and in a later draft there was going to be a scene where the second Neomorph and the first Xenomorph faced off against Daniels and Lope in the escape from the Engineer Temple scene. These were scrapped from the film but retained in the novelization.
• Scott was planning shooting the film in 3D like his past couple of blockbusters but stuck to 2D due to the fading interest in the format.
• David was originally supposed to do a Hitler-style kick while walking through the ship at the end of the movie.
• Early versions of the script begin with an extreme closeup view of the birth a new star, this being the event that unleashes the energy shockwave that then damages the Covenant.
• In the script, Walter continues to debate the merits of whistling to plants with Mother as he moves around the ship. When Mother flatly reminds him there is no purpose in life for machines such as themselves except efficiency, Walter calls her, "Bitch". This was most likely a nod to Ripley calling Mother a bitch in Alien.
• The script contains a scene where several of the crew shower following their unscheduled awakening from stasis. Meanwhile, other crew members get dressed in an adjacent locker room.
• In an early draft, Lander One was to suffer a brief power outage during its descent, momentarily threatening the safety of the craft and all on board. However, the situation corrects itself before any harm can come to the crew and the shuttle lands safely. This scene was intended to tie into a later sub-plot aboard the Covenant that was likewise removed from the film.
• In the film, Planet 4 is conspicuously devoid of any kind of fauna, yet in early versions of the script it still harbors insect and amphibian life, and even small mammals. At one point, Hallett is frightened by a salamander-like creature than crawls across his boot; Karine captures the organism and puts it in a specimen jar.
• Originally, hosts were not infected with Bloodbursters via motes ejected from an egg sack, but rather when they are bitten by microscopic insects. This would have linked into the insect samples later seen in David's lab.
• Early drafts had the team discovering smashed Steatite Ampules within the Juggernaut, around which have grown "prototype Alien Eggs" covered in mould. Hallett goes to touch one, but is called back at the last moment by Lopé. The team moves on, but when Hallett senses movement from the Egg he returns to look, leaning over it. The top of the Egg begins to move, leading the viewer to suspect a Facehugger will burst forth, but instead part of the mould covering the Egg lances out and pricks him in the face, infecting him with a Bloodburster.
• Another brief scene found in the script would have shown Ankor discovering several rotting Engineer bodies through a rupture in the Juggernaut's hull while he is standing guard outside the vessel. As the mist around him begins to clear he sees more corpses scattered down the mountainside below, with broken Steatite Ampules lying among them. He calls in the discovery, and the rest of the team joins him outside to see for themselves. The mist continues to clear, eventually revealing the rotted remains of thousands Engineers littering the mountainside. Disturbed by the sight, Daniels suggests they evacuate the planet immediately, and Oram agrees.
• Following on from the earlier scene where Lander One loses power during its descent, there was originally a more substantial sub-plot set aboard the Covenant that would have explained why the crew is unable to rescue their comrades from Planet 4. This would have begun with Tee moving the Covenant into a lower orbit when things begin to go wrong on the surface, so as to improve the transmission quality with Lander One. However, as soon as he does so the Covenant suffers a total power failure, with all lights and comms going offline. Tee, Ricks and Upworth wait for backup power to kick in but it fails to do so, before artificial gravity also fails, leaving them floating helplessly inside the ship.
• When David saves the Covenant crew from the surviving Neomorph in the wheat field, instead of simply telling them, "Come with me," he originally added, "...if you want to stay alive".
• After David saves the survivors on the ground from the Neomorphs, the next installment of the deleted power failure sub-plot would have occurred. On the Covenant, the stasis systems are also failing, jeopardizing the lives of every colonist and embryo on board if the crew cannot restore power soon. Meanwhile, Tee is attempting to jury-rig the cargo lift's radio to make contact with the team on the surface. He is interrupted by Ricks, who has learned that the power outage is a result of them drifting into an energy field around the planet when they lowered their orbit, and he has come up with a plan to get the Covenant back online — he suggests they extend one of the vessel's solar recharge sails and link it directly to the engines, hopefully generating enough power to get them online and return to a higher orbit.
• In the film, David says almost nothing to the Covenant crew until they reach the citadel. In early iterations of the script, much of the expository dialogue he delivers once they arrive is instead given while the group is making their way there. Additionally, in the script he tells the survivors of the energy field surrounding the planet and warns them that had they tried to leave in Lander One, they never would've made it through. He and Walter also talk about Weyland Corp, with Walter pointing out it is now known as Weyland-Yutani.
• In order to carry out Ricks' plan to power up the Covenant, Tee was originally forced to manually open the vessel's solar sail, going outside in an EVA suit and hauling it out by hand. Meanwhile, Ricks and Upworth work in the engine room to connect the sail's output directly to the core.
• Another scene tied to the removed power failure sub-plot had David explaining to Daniels and Oram that the disruptive energy field surrounding the planet is generated by a pair of satellites that orbit above the planet's poles, and that taking one of them out will deactivate the field. Daniels responds that, as a colony ship, they have no weapons to do this, but subsequently suggests they could used some of the terraforming equipment on board to destroy the satellite.
• A brief dialogue scene in the script had Daniels talk with Cole about his wife and born child, both of whom are in stasis aboard the Covenant.
• The film was originally supposed to feature a confrontation between the Praetomorph and a Neomorph. The scene would have taken place when Daniels and Lopé are fleeing from the Engineer temple towards the cargo lift, whereupon they are attacked by a surviving Neomorph. The Praetomorph born from Oram then appears from the temple, attacks the Neomorph and quickly disembowels it as Daniels and Lopé run towards the cargo lift. Despite the scene's removal from the film, it was included in the novelization.

Other

Unmade Neill Blomkamp fifth Alien film

• Neill Blomkamp had been making conceptual art in his free time as a possible but unlikely film pitch since Fox didn't even know about his ideas. When the art (depicting, among other things, a scarred Hicks and adult Newt) was released on the internet, Fox surprisingly took interest and hired him for the project. However, the film was put on hold pending Alien: Covenant, Blomkamp has moved on to other projects, and Ridley Scott has stated he intends to retain creative control of the franchise until he dies. Scott eventually stated that Blomkamp's film — titled Alien: Awakening — didn't develop beyond a basic outline and was ultimately scrapped by Fox.
  • Many fans have theorized that the Zygote short film Blomkamp released in 2017 retained many elements that he had originally planned to include in Alien 5. The most obvious signs are the two main characters being Expies of Hicks and Newt who are forced to fight and flee from an alien abomination. It's also been noted how the actress portraying the heroine of the short film, Dakota Fanning, was a perfect match for an older Newt. And there is also the dissected Ambiguously Human creature from the operating table, whose black, mechanical costume resembles the exoskeleton of a xenomorph.