NEED TO KNOW
Sigourney Weaver stands by Alien 3.
The actress. 76. shared her love for the movie sequel while looking back on her illustrious career during a panel at New York Comic Con on Friday, Oct. 10.
When moderator Josh Horowitz asked for her thoughts on the flick, which was poorly reviewed upon its release in 1992. she said, “I like it because it’s so utterly different from the first two. I felt that [20th Century] Fox was smart to keep choosing very gifted directors who wanted to do something completely different with the Alien story.”
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Alien 3, which followed 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens, was directed by David Fincher in his directorial debut and featured a script by David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson. The movie sees Weaver reprising her iconic Ellen Ripley character as she continues to battle deadly creatures after her escape pod lands on a planet occupied by former male prisoners.
“I had total confidence in David [Fincher],” the actress said, before giving insight into the movie’s original script that was written by Vincent Ward and eventually scrapped by executives.
“It had all these monks in space, in a kind of medieval garden,” she explained. “My character, I guess, crash landed and then I was in a coma for about half the movie. So I wasn’t crazy about that script.”
Weaver continued to talk about the challenges faced during production, saying, “I feel like David [Fincher] would’ve loved a chance to work on the script before we had to start shooting. We did delay but not enough for him to feel he’d solved a lot of the problems.”
“I think we had the most amazing group of actors, amazing crew,” she ultimately said. “It’s meaningful to me and I don’t really compare them.”
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Weaver added that those involved were “a little shocked” that Fincher killed off a few of the beloved characters in the franchise. “That was hard for Ripley and for me. But that’s space, you got to move on. These things happen,” she said.
Alien 3 premiered in 1992 to mixed reception. The movie currently has a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the lowest score of the first four movies. Alien, in comparison, has a 93% approval rate, and then there’s Aliens at 94% and Alien Resurrection at 56%.
About 15 year later, the movie franchise picked back up with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. The latest movie installment, Alien: Romulus, was released in 2025.
Weaver also spoke about whether she’d reprise her role as Ripley in a future sequel during the panel. The actress described reading the beginning of a potential script from Hill, who has produced all the main movies in the Alien franchise.
“You know, Walter Hill is a very good friend of mine and he wrote 50 pages of where Ripley would be now and they are quite extraordinary,” she said. “So I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I have had a meeting with Fox, Disney or whoever it is now.”
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“I have never felt the need [to reprise the role.] I was always like ‘let her rest, let her recover.’ But what Walter has written, first of all, seems so true to me. It’s very much about the society that would incarcerate someone who has tried to help mankind, but she’s a problem to them so she’s sort of tucked away,” Weaver explained.
“I think it’s a very strong first 50 pages. I’m thinking about working with Walter to see what the rest of the story would be,” she said.
