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10 Films That Directors Just Made Up On The Fly

Have you heard about Alien: Covenant? The film that was Prometheus 2 then Alien: Paradise Lost, before it adopted its current title, may be in trouble. Not the kind of trouble that Prometheus faced (namely, putting Damon Lindelof in charge of the script) - this is much worse. Ben Child at the Guardian has added up all the info we have on Covenant so far and come to the conclusion that Ridley Scott is seemingly just making the film up as he goes.

10) Alien 3

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Alien

Alien Covenant isn’t a one-off. Hell, it isn’t even the first film in the Alien franchise to be a victim of delayed planning and indecisiveness. Alien 3 went through numerous iterations before it finally came to shooting – Vincent Ward’s ‘wooden planet’ vision, featuring space-monks interpreting the xenomorph as the Devil incarnate, came close to being the filmed final idea – but when shooting did finally begin, no final script was ready.

Director David Fincher, who was brought in at the last minute, oversaw a production wherein $7 million in sets were built then discarded because the script was constantly changing. Ideas were lifted from Vincent Ward’s concept and from David Twohy’s prison planet script, to make a mash-up so jumbled it took a year just to edit some sense into the film. The final cut, however, is still no one’s idea of coherent. Also, Fincher has since disowned it.