If you're a fan of the Alien franchise, this is probably going to be a great year for you. After Prometheus brought director Ridley Scott back to the series he created, he is now making a proper prequel with Alien: Covenant. As exciting as that is, there is still a lot of hope among fans for District 9 director Neill Blomkamp's proposed Alien 5. Unfortunately, he has now made it fairly clear that the movie probably isn't going to happen.

Neill Blomkamp recently took to Twitter in order to address a fan question about Alien 5, the movie he was going to make before Ridley Scott decided that he finally wanted to make his Prometheus sequel, which we now know as Alien: Covenant. The fan in question asked, "what are the chances of the alien project happening?" Neill Blomkamp simply and disappointingly responded with "slim."

For those who may not know how Neill Blomkamp got involved in possibly making what he calls a direct sequel to Aliens, which would essentially ignore the events of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, it all started while he was working on his movie Chappie. Back when he was promoting Chappie, he randomly tweeted out some concept art for a sequel to Aliens that went viral in a big way and got fans of the franchise very excited. This got the attention of Fox, and that ultimately led to the movie getting the go-ahead. Blomkamp had a draft of the script completed and everything seemed in place, but then things fell apart when Ridley Scott started working on Alien: Covenant. The movie wasn't officially canceled, but there has been zero progress made in quite some time. Now it seems like the time may have passed altogether.

Over the summer a 30th-anniversary panel was held for Aliens at San Diego Comic-Con and at that time, Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn both seemed optimistic that Alien 5 was going to happen at some point. And there have been reports that Carrie Henn would return as Newt. Sigourney Weaver has talked quite a bit about the project since it was announced and seems very enthusiastic about doing it, but her enthusiasm is no match for the power of Ridley Scott. Fox made the deal to make Alien 5 before the release of Chappie, which didn't do well critically and died at the box office. Around the same time, Ridley Scott released The Martian, which crushed at the box office and got a ton of awards recognition. He then also decided he finally wanted to make Alien: Covenant. Being that Alien is his franchise and that he had the hot hand, Fox seemingly decided that was the better way to go and didn't want to step on his toes by letting Neill Blomkamp also do his Aliens sequel.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Alien 5 definitely won't happen, but the movie will almost certainly have to wait until Ridley Scott is done with his Alien movies. He reportedly has at least one more movie that will come after Alien: Covenant that will round out a prequel series leading up to the events of the original Alien. If that is, in fact, the case, we'll probably have to wait a while, if it happens at all, for Alien 5. The good news? Alien: Covenant is set for release on May 19, 2017.