Today brings news that San Diego Comic-Con will play host to a special panel to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Aliens, James Cameron’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic. Cameron himself will be in attendance along with Sigourney Weaver, who is still talking up Neill Blomkamp’s new Alien sequel despite reports that the project had been delayed due to Scott’s own Alien prequel plans.

If there’s an interview with Sigourney Weaver about the Alien franchise, you can bet there’ll be an update on Blomkamp’s project, which was (or is?) set to reunite the actress with Michael Biehn for a new sequel that picks up where Cameron’s Aliens left off. As both Weaver and Blomkamp have explained before, the new film would basically ignore both Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection — something the actress reiterates in a new feature over at Entertainment Weekly:

It’s just as if, you know, the path forks and one direction goes off to three and four and another direction goes off to Neill’s movie.

As EW puts it, Blomkamp’s film will “de-canonize” the series to a degree, sort of offering an alternate version of events post-Aliens. It’s an intriguing idea, but one that still inspires a healthy amount of skepticism. The District 9 director’s strength lies in his consistently interesting, highly-detailed production design, but his scripts tend to be underwhelming at best. The two films he’s directed since making his big sci-fi debut — Elysium and Chappie — are great to look at, but…that’s about it.

With Scott working on Alien: Covenant and planning at least one more Alien prequel, it may still be several years before Blomkamp gets to make his Alien sequel, at which point Weaver & Co. may no longer be interested or available.

As for Aliens, EW also has a look at the upcoming 30th anniversary Blu-ray release, which arrives on September 13. The Blu-ray will be available to pre-order at Comic-Con, and the first 250 attendees to place an order will receive a limited edition lithograph of Ripley battling the Alien Queen.

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