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The Untold Story of How Ridley Scott Saw 'Star Wars'—and Ended Up Making 'Alien'

In 1977, Ridley Scott was considering making a medieval period piece. Then he saw Star Wars and set about making two sci-fi classics, "Alien" and "Blade Runner."

In 1977, still smarting from the box office failure of his first film, The Duellists, Ridley Scott, ever the steely Northumberland pragmatist, decided that he needed to pick himself up and do what he’d always done throughout his career: He would put his head down and barrel forward with work. In the end, the director would settle on the familiar-but-not-too-familiar faces of Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, and a then unknown named Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the ship’s warrant officer. Scott would, in fact, labor on Dune for more than seven months with screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer ( Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid) in London, trying to shoehorn its vast, unwieldy story into a manageable two-hour script.

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