Why Alien: Covenant Made So Much Less Than Prometheus At The Box Office

By Padraig Cotter

Published Feb 4, 2025

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movie franchise after a 30-year absence. Firstly, he felt the titular Star Beast no longer held the power to scare audiences, since the design had been so overexposed thanks to sequels and other spinoffs. Scott wanted to replace the monster with AI as the new threat and use the property as a springboard to explore other themes and concepts.

That's why Prometheus was a prequel that had little to do with the previous movies, with the movie grossing over $400 million worldwide. The The ending of Prometheus openly set up a sequel, though Alien: Covenant would see the series run head first into an identity crisis.

The Reception To Prometheus Affected Alien: Covenant’s Box Office Chances

Prometheus split opinion right down the middle

The android David (Michael Fassbender) collects samples in Prometheus

One area where Prometheus excelled was in the marketing, with the posters and teaser trailers doing an excellent job building hype. The film's box office haul was quite impressive for an R-rated sci-fi movie aimed at grown-ups - but it wasn't a total home run either. Soon after its release, there was a flood of articles and videos trying to break down what Prometheus meant or explaining plot holes. That soon led to complaints about how dumb or unlikeable the characters were, or why Guy Pearce had been hired to play a 103-year-old man.

Every Alien Movie	Budget	Box Office
Alien (1979)	$10.7 million	$188,034,787
Aliens (1986)	$17 million	$183,291,893
Alien 3 (1992)	$55 million	$158,500,000
Alien Resurrection (1997)	$60 million	$160,707,848
Alien vs Predator (2004)	$70 million	$172,543,519
Alien vs Predator: Requiem (2007)	$40 million	$128,884,494
Prometheus (2012)	$125 million	$402,448,265
Alien: Covenant (2017)	$97 million	$238,521,247
Alien: Romulus (2024)	$80 million	$350,865,342

Audiences and critics agreed that the movie looked gorgeous, that Michael Fassbender was excellent as the sinister android David and it introduced fascinating new concepts like the Enginners' black goo. Even so, the Alien prequel was uncooked in other areas, especially in regard to character development. It felt like the discourse surrounding Prometheus was more engaging than the final product, which dampened excitement for a sequel. That might be why Covenant's $239 million haul was way down from Prometheus' box office result.

Alien: Covenant Tried To Course-Correct The Alien Franchise After Prometheus

Fox wanted more Alien connections for the sequel

One of Scott's famous quotes about dropping the Xenomorph from Prometheus was that the beast was "cooked" with "an orange in his mouth" (via Yahoo!) Scott felt there was simply nowhere else to go with the creature, but following the mixed reception to Prometheus, Fox wanted the sequel to lean into the franchise's past. This included the Xenomorph, Facehuggers, and other staples reappearing. So the result is a film that acts as a direct sequel to Prometheus and a soft reboot, with sprinkles of Alien thrown in for good measure.

The final act of Alien: Covenant is utterly lacking in suspense, and the CGI used to bring the "Praetomorph" to life is unconvincing.

Looking back on the sequel, it's clear Scott was far more engaged by the Prometheus side of the story. He's diving deeper into that movie's themes like the created vs the creator, or humanity vs AI. On the other side, Scott still has to deliver on the demands of an Alien movie, so there are monster chases and gory deaths - but compared to the 1979 original, Scott's work on Covenant feels half-hearted. The final act on the titular spaceship is utterly lacking in suspense, and the CGI used to bring the "Praetomorph" to life is unconvincing.

There's also the fact that Alien: Covenant arrived a full five years after Prometheus, which further cooled excitement for the future adventures of David and Shaw (Noomi Rapace). It may not have helped that Covenant was a strange mishmash of Prometheus and Alien.

Alien: Covenant’s Box Office Meant That The Story Would Never Be Completed

What became of David may never be revealed

Danny McBride's Tennessee & Katherine Waterston's Daniels holding rifles and walking down a hallway and Michael Fassbender's David looking intensely in Alien Covenant — Custom Image by Grant Hermanns

Prior to the release of Covenant, Scott was hyping plans for a third film, rumored to be called Awakening. This would have picked up from Alien: Covenant's cliffhanger ending, where David has taken control of the ship and planning continue his experiments on the sleeping colonists. Scott had plans for at least two more sequels, though he still wanted to tie his prequels into the beginning of Alien and the Nostromo crew discovering the derelict ship. The box-office response to Covenant put an immediate halt to those plans and prematurely ended the David story.

Whatever the faults of Scott's Alien prequels, David was easily the most compelling part. He was a villain who was also surprisingly easy to root for; ironically for an android, he felt like the most three-dimensional character in both movies. The third film would have set David up as some kind of twisted Dr. Moreau, and audiences would have seen more of his experiments with Xeno DNA and the black goo.

Ridley Scott previously ed on directing a version of Alien 3 penned by cyberpunk author William Gibson; this version also featured a DNA altering Xeno virus.

Sadly, the response to Alien: Covenant made it crystal clear audiences didn't want to see anymore. In hindsight, maybe it would have been for the best had Prometheus been a one-and-done Alien prequel as intended, which explained how the derelict ship ended up on LV-426. Instead, the story was given an open-ended conclusion with an eye on future movies that would - eventually - reveal where the derelict came from. This was a sloppy approach to mapping out a story, and Covenant's disted feel speaks to that.

Alien: Romulus’ Success Confirms Disney Was Right In Moving Away From Prometheus

Romulus righted the Alien ship

Cailee from Alien: Romulus and Walter from Prometheus — Custom Image by Milica Djordjevic

The underperformance of Covenant left the franchise with no clear direction, and the acquisition of Fox by Disney only made things muddier in the years that followed. Despite Scott's wish to continue with the Prometheus saga, that simply wasn't going to happen. This eventually led to Fede Álvarez's box office hit Alien: Romulus, another soft reboot that took place between the first and second movies. It didn't retcon Prometheus or Covenant out of existence though, since the black goo plays an important role in the plot.

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Could Michael Fassbender’s David Return in Alien: Romulus 2?

Alien: Romulus is set to get a sequel, but could Michael Fassbender's David return?

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The movie's success has reinvigorated the property, and there is already talk of a sequel being put together. Had the most recent Alien film been a continuation of Scott's prequels, the response may have been entirely different. In any long-running film series, it's important for the filmmakers behind them to push the limits and try something different. Even so, the audience's response to Scott's Alien origin saga was lukewarm at best and absolutely bemused and bored at worst.

Alien: Romulus is no masterpiece itself, but it was the type of gory, gooey B-movie thrill ride viewers were looking for. The fact it wove some Prometheus lore in there proves the DNA of Scott's prequels will be part of the franchise moving forwards; that said, a full-fledged return to that era is unlikely now.

Source: The Numbers, Yahoo!