Fede Álvarez is bailing on directing the Alien: Romulus sequel

Álvarez has co-written a script for a sequel to his 2024 space thriller, but declined to direct the film himself.

By William Hughes | September 5, 2025 | 6:09pm

Fede Alvarez at the premiere of Alien: Romulus, Photo: Kate Green/Getty Images

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Fede Álvarez is bailing on directing the Alien: Romulus sequel

Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus was a modest success for Disney when it skittered into theaters last year, earning the kind of reviews and—probably more importantly—the kind of box office receipts that usually make a sequel a natural next step. And, indeed, the studio green-lit one pretty much immediately, tapping Álvarez to write some new, presumably very goopy, adventures for Cailee Spaeny’s Rain to suffer through. The obvious assumption was that Álvarez would also direct the ensuing film, because why mess with success, but THR reveals today that said assumption was as faulty as a Weyland-Yutani employee worrying overmuch about their retirement plan: Álvarez is bailing on the directing job for Romulus 2.

Álvarez made the reveal to TooFab this week, while being interviewed on the red carpet for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. Noting that this has never been a franchise where directors tends to stick around (only originator Ridley Scott having come back for another bite at the proverbial pulsating space womb), Álvarez says he intends to seek out a new director who “really wants to go for the jugular” on the story he’s been crafting. That being said, he will be sticking around the franchise in a wider capacity: The sequel will work from the script he wrote with Romulus co-writer Rodo Sayagues, and Álvarez will serve alongside Scott as a producer on the sequel. Speaking of the hand-off, Álvarez noted, “I think that’s usually what has happened, except for Ridley, filmmakers come, you make one and you pass the baton to the next one. But we wrote the story because we really love what we started with Romulus and we want to continue the story.”