Alien star Sigourney Weaver has slammed 20th Century Fox for the studio’s “idiotic” decision to not support David Fincher’s vision while making Alien 3, a movie the director has since distanced himself from.
“I keenly felt the lack of studio support,” Weaver said in a new interview with Deadline. “That was a transition moment when studios stopped being about, ‘Let’s make great films’ and started being about, ‘Let’s not lose money.’ They had the great idea to put David Fincher aboard for his first film, but then not to support the guy was very idiotic.”
She added, “I could feel that David had to get on the phone and fight every day for us to shoot what he wanted to the next day. And I’m sorry that he didn’t get a chance to make the script his own before we started. That makes filmmaking very difficult.”
Released in 1992 as Fincher’s debut feature, Alien 3 picks up directly after the events of 1986’s Aliens and follows Ellen Ripley (Weaver) as her escape pod crash lands on a penal colony in space – with a Xenomorph-shaped companion in tow.
Weaver went on to play Ripley in one more Alien movie after Fincher’s threequel: 1997’s Alien Resurrection. She doesn’t appear in the latest movie in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, which was released earlier this month and directed by Evil Dead helmer Fede Alvarez.
Set between the events of the series’ first and second movies, it follows a group of 20-somethings desperate to escape their work contracts on a Weyland-Yutani colony who attempt to steal cryostasis chambers from an abandoned research station. There’s a reason the station is empty, though – and the group quickly finds out why.
Alien: Romulus is out now in theaters. For more on the movie, check out our Alien: Romulus review and our guide to watching the Alien movies in order.
