Sorry, But Sigourney Weaver Doesn’t Want To Return To The ‘Alien’-Verse As Ripley: ‘That Ship Has Sailed’
Imagine being called back to again do a job you hadn’t done in decades. If you’re a big time Hollywood actor, that’s become a regular part of the business. Just ask Michael Keaton, who in The Flash plays Batman/Bruce Wayne for the first time in some 31 years. But another performer who played an iconic role is taking a stand.
In a new interview with Total Film (as caught by Deadline), Sigourney Weaver was decidedly no longer interested in returning again to the role that made her a star. That’s right: You won’t be seeing her play Ellen Ripley, the lone survivor of the first Alien — and who made three more, despite eating it in the second sequel — ever again.
“There are all kinds of younger actors taking this kind of role. And there was an Alien [film] that I really wanted to do with Neill Blomkamp and we didn’t get to do that, but, you know, that ship has sailed,” Weaver told Total Film. “I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. I put in my time in space!”
In the mid-teens, Weaver was in talks to reprise Ripley for a fifth Alien, to have been helmed by District 9’s Neil Blomkamp. Alas, that one got shelved when original Alien director Ridley Scott decided to make the Prometheus sequel/Alien prequel Alien: Covenant. That one’s underperformance chilled the franchise for a bit, though a new, Hulu-bound stand-alone from Don’t Breathe’s Fede Álvarez is currently in principal photography. And so her last stint as Ripley will have been over 25 years ago, in Alien: Resurrection.
Weaver may not ever return as Ripley, but she is busy with all those Avatar sequels, in which she’s now playing a Na’vi teenager. She did, however, go see the amazing-looking Alien play mounted at a New Jersey high school.
(Via Deadline)