On Sunday night, I wrote about Ridley Scott letting slip in an AFI Fest interview that Prometheus 2, which had been re-titled Alien: Paradise Lost, had now officially again been re-titled Alien: Covenant, a move which ratchets up the religious symbolism of the prequel trilogy and is much easier to say. Then on Monday morning, 20th Century Fox released the official title treatment and logo for the project.

Scott said that he’d begin shooting the new Alien film in February of next year, and I figured that would probably mean a late-2017 release date. Turns out I was right. Along with the announcement and logo reveal, Fox also confirmed Alien: Covenant‘s release date to be October 6, 2017. Halloween time alien stuff?

The official synopsis of the film is thus:

Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

So, this tells us two things:

1) That Noomi Rapace’s character may not have survived the trip off of the planet/David may have killed her/it happens hundreds of years later.

2) That all of the titles of this trilogy will also be the name of the central ship in the story.

That seems a little on the nose, doesn’t it? Does that mean they’re going to re-title the 1979 film Alien: Nostromo and the 1986 film Alien: Sulaco? (Yes, I did have to look up the name of the ship in Aliens.)

We can begin our speculation about the plot now, but we know that David’s decapitated head and Shaw were flying toward the Engineers’ homeworld. Maybe she didn’t like what she found? Guess we’ll find out in a year and 11 months’ time. In the meantime, join Dan Casey and Kyle Hill as they break down what this all means on today’s episode of Nerdist News!

What do you think about this new title and synopsis? How about that really-not-enthralling logo? Let us know in the comments!

—

Images: 20th Century Fox

Kyle Anderson is the Weekend Editor and a film and TV critic for Nerdist.com. Follow him on Twitter!