That doesn’t mean he didn’t flirt with the idea. “Someone said: ‘Ask what Arnie gets,'” Scott recalls (referring to franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger). “I thought: ‘I’ll try it out.’ I said: ‘I want what Arnie gets.’ When they said yes, I thought: ‘Fuck me.’ But I couldn’t do it. It’s not my thing. It’s like doing a Bond movie. The essence of a Bond movie is fun and camp. Terminator is pure comic strip. I would try to make it real. That’s why they’ve never asked me to do a Bond movie, because I could fuck it up.”
There are no hard feelings between James Cameron and Ridley Scott for whatever franchise sins were committed: “Jim and I talk often. We’re not exactly friends, but we do talk and he’s a great guy,” Scott told Deadline back in 2023. However, he was “deeply hurt” that he was passed over for the Alien sequel, especially because “had been trying to develop something” himself. Reflecting on the subject decades later, Scott admitted he was unhappy about how the rights shook out. “I’m the author of two franchises. Most directors in Hollywood—certainly, let’s say, at my level—don’t let that stuff go,” he said. “But I did Alien as my second movie, so I didn’t have much choice. And Blade Runner was my third movie. So, I had no choice because I had very tough partners. It was kind of ‘Welcome to Hollywood.'”
Those experiences didn’t turn him off franchises for good. He tells The Guardian that a third Gladiator movie “is in process right now.” And after helming Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in the 2010s, he’s not against returning to that franchise either: “Another Alien prequel—yeah, if I get an idea, for sure.”
