Ridley Scott wants to focus less on Xenomorphs in the next Alien movie and instead explore the threat of AI.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Scott revealed he is planning to make an Alien film that further explores the capabilities of artificial intelligence. "I think what we have to do is gradually drift away from the alien stuff," he said.
"People say, 'You need more alien, you need more face pulling, need more chest bursting,' so I put a lot of that in Covenant and it fitted nicely," Scott said. "But I think if you go again you need to start finding another solution that's more interesting. I think AI is becoming much more dangerous and therefore more interesting."
Scott cited the recent Facebook experiment—where two androids began communicating with each other in a way humans couldn’t understand—as an inspiration. "It already invented a f—ing language!" Scott said. "And they couldn't decipher what the language was so they had to switch them off. What was said and where's it gone? They could have already implemented something we don’t know."
Scott has explored AI in some of his previous work, with Michael Fassbender starring as the synthetic David in Alien: Covenant and Prometheus, and Sean Young playing the Rachel replicant in Blade Runner.
For more on the Alien franchise, read our Alien: Covenant review.
Scott is currently busy finishing reshooting All the Money in the World, which will open in theaters on December 22. The director recently opened up about cutting Kevin Spacey from the movie.
Alex Gilyadov is a freelance writer for IGN. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel and follow him on Twitter.