By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

The Alien prequel is set to become its own franchise, with three more movies planned…

Ridley Scott is planning as many as four Prometheus films, the veteran director has revealed to German site FilmFutter this week, with the fourth instalment finally linking directly to the events of his classic, franchise-spawning 1979 movie Alien.

The clear link to Alien “won’t be in the next one,” said Scott, “It will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise.”

The first Prometheus film received mixed reviews, but did well at the box-office. Scott told FilmFutter, “the whole point” of Prometheus was “to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself.” The director added:

“I always thought of the Alien as kind of a piece of bacterial warfare. I always thought that that original ship, which I call the Croissant, was a battleship, holding these biomechanoid creatures that were all about destruction.”

Meanwhile, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, is moving forward with his fifth instalment of the original Alien franchise, though Scott’s Prometheus 2 will likely hit cinemas first in 2017. The final two Prometheus movies will arrive in 2019 and 2021, by which time Scott, at 83, will surely be contemplating retirement.