One of the gripes a number of people had with Prometheus was the utterly inappropriate levels of idiocy among a crew who were supposed to be at the top of their career fields – Sean Harris and Rafe Spall’s capering being utterly ill at ease with the galaxy-spanning ramifications of their discovery. Nonetheless, this does not seem to have put off the makers of sequel Alien: Covenant, as Eastbound And Down funnyman Danny McBride is the latest name to be added to the roster.
Admittedly, describing McBride solely as a funnyman would be unfair. He’s done serious material well previously in the likes of the award-winning Up In The Air, and Eastbound And Down covers some seriously dark subject matter at times, all of which he is totally at ease with. His genre output has been mixed to date (we didn’t think a whole lot of Your Highness, although we enjoyed This Is The End a lot more), but it’ll be hard to judge until we discover exactly what kind of character he’s playing – information which is yet to be disclosed.
He joins a cast that already includes fellow newcomer Katherine Waterston and the returning Michael Fassbender, who will reprise his role as David. The sinister android will be the main focus of the plot, which sees the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovering him as the sole survivor on a dangerous world – and you can probably guess what kind of creatures will be dwelling there.
Original director Ridley Scott is back on directing duties, working on a script from Michael Green that was subsequently rewritten by Jack Paglen.
Alien: Covenant will be released in cinemas in 2017 – you can download Alien: The Complete Manual from GreatDigitalMags.com now. For more news about the biggest movies, pick up the latest issue of SciFiNow.
