Remember earlier this year when Ridley Scott talked non-stop about his “Alien” prequel films? And then remember how everything suddenly got very quiet? Perhaps there is a reason for this.
Script Flags (via Bleeding Cool) are reporting that Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox are clashing over the budget and rating for his prequels. According to the site, “Scott wants a budget of around $250m to make it a sci-fi spectacular, and is also pushing for an 18-rated level of violence and horror” (bear in mind this is a Brit site so change “18-rated” to “R”). Fox apparently don’t want to spend that much and want a wide audience friendly PG-13 rating.
While we can’t vouch for the source, the circumstantial evidence does add up. Scott has already intimated more than once that his 3D prequels will be gritty, and that he wants to out do James Cameron’s “Aliens.” And he was definitely jazzed about doing the films after reading the original script by Jon Spaights, but the hire last summer by Fox of “Lost” writer and “Star Trek,” “Cowboys & Aliens” c0-writer, Damon Lindelof to re-write the script certainly seems like they want a much more populist and PG-13 affair.
One only has to look at the box office performance of Scott’s last two films to see why they might be hesitant to hand over $250 million to the director. “Body Of Lies” (rated R) brought in $115 million on a $70 million budget; “Robin Hood” (PG-13″) brought in $310 million on a budget of $200 million. While arguably profitable, with budgets like that, studios are expecting at least double their investment if not more. Particularly for a budgets over $200 million, Fox would want some “Inception” or “Avatar” sized numbers (both rated PG-13 btw).
Also worth mentioning is Script Flags’ August story is that “[Noomi] Rapace met with….Ridley Scott (and Scott Free’s Michael Costigan) [and he] is most likely currently looking for lead actresses and with the films he has on his slate there is really only one that requires personal meetings at this stage, Alien Prequel.” It’s an interesting way to connect the dots — Rapace did indeed meet with several Hollywood directors — but it seems like she is just in the mix (he also met with a not-so-interested Gemma Arteton), rather than a favored choice.
It will be interesting to see how long Scott waits to get a green light from the studio. He doesn’t like to sit idly by and has numerous projects he can jump to instead, but lately, this is easily the one he’s most eager to do. If you’re a concerned fanboy you can join this very lame Facebook campaign for Scott to retain creative control on the film.