April 26 has officially been declared asAlien Day, and to help celebrate,Famous Monsters of Filmlandcaught up with directorJames Cameron, the man behind 1986’s seminal sci-fi classicAliens, to talk about the film’s 30th Anniversary. In doing so, they dared ask the man behind 5 upcomingAvatarmovies if he ever plans to make anotherAliensequel sometime in the future. He doesn’t say no. But he doesn’t say yes, either.
“Unless somebody could come up with some spectacularly new concept. I’ve got my own kind of alien world that I’m enslaved to now with the Avatar films, so I can pretty much rule that out.”
It’s been three decades sinceJames Cameronwon over the summer movie crowd with his take on the xenomorph monster inAliens. Sadly, it sounds like this might be the only time the filmmaker ever steps foot in this franchise again. Even so,Aliensturned out to be a hugely influential movie, not just in terms of theAlienseries, but all sci-fi action thrillers that followed in its wake.James Camerongoes onto say this about creating the world ofAliensfor an 80s audience who had not yet been bombarded with reboots and remakes at that point (though it was starting as 20th Century Fox, the studio behindAliens, also releasedThe Flyremake that same summer).
“My goals were twofold, and one was not prioritized over the other. The first goal was to honor and continue what Ridley had started. And the second goal was to make it my own film. I felt that it was important to be stylistically continuous with the first film. But in terms of the way the story is told, the elements of the story, introducing the idea of afuture military, that was just a way into it that made it different, that was a distinguishing factor.”
Even ifJames Cameronwere to direct anotherAlien movie, it wouldn’t arrive until 2025 at the earliest. During the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas earlier this month, the director confirmed that he is making four moreAvatarsequels instead of the previously announced three, with the first coming in 2018 and the final one coming in 2023. TheTerminatorrights are also set to revert back toCameronbefore the end of the decade, but it’s doubtful he’ll make another sequel to that franchise either. At least we haveAvatarto look forward to in the coming years. We have the cover art for Famous Monsters issue #286, which hits newsstands soon and features the fullJames Cameroninterview.
