Neil Blomkamp's Abandoned 'Alien' Concepts Reveal A Great Film That Never Was

If I could sum up my relationship to the Aliens movie franchise in two words, they would be "affectionately turbulent". The entire series has bobbed and darted at each end of the spectrum of quality, from Ridley Scott's masterful 1979 original and James Cameron's superb if tonally divergent sequel, to the series' last two sequels (and one prequel) that charitably run the gamut between 'scattershot' and 'unfortunate'. So when I saw these concept art pieces posted by Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) related to a supposedly cancelled(?) spec-sequel helmed by the man himself, my heart broke a little.

Hello Mother.

Part of me is stubbornly holding out hope that this is all just a stealth-promotion campaign to drum up and demonstrate public support for his own iteration in the franchise, much like the 'leak' of the Deadpool sizzle-trailer that coincidentally led to the film finally be green-lit after witnessing the hype. At least, that's what I imagine this is when you have sheepishly implicit remarks like , "[20th Century Fox] didn't even know I was working on it haha...Woulda rocked. Was a mental stroll into the world Ridley Scott created...maybe I'll go back to it ....love the world". 

Check out the rest below the break. Shouts out to Meredith Woerner of io9 for breaking the story!