News Culture ‘I was mad’ Ridley Scott had trouble letting James Cameron direct the sequel to his cult sci-fi film!
Published on November 17, 2023 at 1:50 p.m
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Ridley Scott recently reflected on a difficult moment in his career. He didn’t like it at all that James Cameron took over the sequel to his famous science fiction film!
Ridley Scott’s latest film Napoleon will be released on November 22, 2023 and the filmmaker is currently conducting promotional interviews. In a recent interview with Deadline, he talks behind the scenes of his new work, but also looks back on anecdotes from his career. Among other things, he tells us about one of his biggest frustrations. In 1979 he released Alien: The Eighth Passenger, one of the greatest successes of his career and a reference in the horror SF genre. And while he worked on the continuity of the work, He learned that someone else would: James Cameron was working on “Aliens,” the direct sequel.
Jim called me to tell me about his project, he was very nice, but he said: “Honestly, it’s hard, your creature is so unique. It’s hard to make it scary again, staying in this familiar territory. “So, I’m going to go for a sequel that has more action, the kind with guns.” I said okay. But really, it’s the first time in my career that I said to myself: Well… Welcome to Hollywood! (…) I was mad. I didn’t tell Jim, but I think I was hurt. -Ridley Scott
At the time, Ridley Scott wasn’t in the best shape and he admitted that this was what triggered this reaction. The director had difficulty recovering from the failure of Blade Runner during previews and was frustrated that one of his best works was being further removed from him. To compensate, he remembers doing a lot of exercise: “I did a lot of push-ups, played a lot of tennis, hit the ball hard and tried to imagine my next film.” He later released “Legend” with Tom Cruise in 1985.
However, this frustration that James Cameron caused Ridley Scott did not stop the two men from later collaborating on the Alien series! While four films were released with Alien 3 in 1992 and Alien Resurrection in 1997, the two filmmakers discussed the idea of co-directing Alien 5. Unfortunately, the project was canceled when Fox used the rights to make a crossover with the Predator saga: Aliens Vs Predator. This work disgusted the directing duo. After that they couldn’t continue. It wasn’t until 2012 that Ridley Scott returned to the theme of “Alien” with “Prometheus”. All films in the franchise can be streamed on Disney+.
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