We know that director Ridley Scott's next movie will be the sci-fi sequel Prometheus 2, the follow-up to his 2012 hit Prometheus. Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender are confirmed to come back as Elizabeth Shaw and the android David, with production slated to begin in January 2016. While there still isn't much we know about the story at this point, Ridley Scott revealed in an interview with the German site FilmFutter.com that he is actually developing more than one sequel. Here's what he had to say, when asked if Prometheus 2 would connect to his beloved Alien franchise.

"Yes, but it won't be in the next one. It will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise. The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself. 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."

It's worth noting that this quote was translated from German, so it may either be inaccurate or possibly out of context, but it certainly is exciting news for Prometheus and Alien fans alike. Many believed that the Prometheus movies would eventually connect directly to Ridley Scott's Alien franchise, but it seems that the filmmaker doesn't plan on doing so right away. Perhaps fans will take solace that the filmmaker does have a plan in place, but we'll have to wait and see how Prometheus 2 turns out.

Jack Paglen (Transcendence) and Michael Green (Untitled Blade Runner Project) are writing the screenplay for Prometheus 2, with Ridley Scott confirming last year that the sequel will feature a new alien. The filmmaker added that the "baby alien" in Prometheus was "very close" to the creature from his original Alien movie, adding that this extraterrestrial in the sequel will be much different. Prometheus ended with both Elizabeth Shaw and David, the only survivors left from the original movie, continuing their journey to find the home world of the Engineers.

20th Century Fox is also in the early stages of production on Alien 5, with Neill Blomkamp directing. It was reported that Prometheus 2 will actually delay work on Alien 5, so it isn't known when that project may see the light of day. Prometheus 2 will hit theaters in 2017, while it's expected that Alien 5 will get a 2018 release date. What do you think about these new details?