LOST’s Damon Lindelof Rewriting ALIEN Prequel

Mike Fleming of Deadline New York has news that Damon Lindelof has taken his first big solo screenwriting job since concluding the ABC series Lost.

I’m been told that he closed a deal to do rewrite work on 20th Century Fox’s ALIEN prequel, which the studio hopes Ridley Scott will direct as his next assignment. In a development as vexing as a Lost plotline, studio insiders said that while Lindelof indeed met with Scott and the studio for that rewrite job, the exchange of ideas between them sparked a take that could well turn out to be a free-standing science fiction film. The studio will decide when Lindelof turns it in. Scott Free is producing and Lindelof’s CAA reps closed his deal last night.

Lindeloff is currently writing with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci Paramount’s STAR TREK sequel, on which Lindelof is a producer. He also teamed with Kurtzman and Orci to write the Jon Favreau-directed COWBOYS AND ALIENS, which is shooting now with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford.

That’s plenty of action, but I’m told that Lindelof jumped at this opportunity because Scott’s 1979 space thriller ALIEN was such a seminal influence on him. Resuscitating the Alien franchise has been a big priority for Fox, which has a script by Jon Spaihts, who wrote the Gabriele Muccino-directed Keanu Reeves-starrer PASSENGERS for Morgan Creek, and whose drafts on the Alien film persuaded Scott to move from producing the film to directing it.

Source: Deadline New York