Alien 5: Sigourney Weaver confirmed to return

Sigourney Weaver is returning to the world of Alien.

Neill Blomkamp has confirmed Sigourney Weaver will reprise her role as Ripley in the forthcoming Alien film.

The writer and director has been working with the Oscar-nominated actress on new sci-fi film Chappie, and said it inspired him to cast her again in his reboot of Ridley Scott's Alien.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly he said: "[Wanting to do this Alien movie] did have to do with having Sigourney on Chappie. It's just something that I've always wanted one day to be part of.

"I talked to her about her experience making those films and what she thought about Ripley and everything else, it informed and changed the film I wanted to make into something different."

Blomkamp announced the reboot last week on Instagram, posting some visual concepts of his reimagined Alien world.

The writer-director, whose past films include District 9 and Elysium, said he came up with the idea for the movie a few years ago and began writing the script without Fox knowing about it.

"Fox never knew. I just worked on it when I could. Before I knew it, I had this really awesome film with a lot of artwork and a lot of backstory. And then I didn't know whether I was going to make it or not.

"So I just kind of sat on it for a while."

The writer-director confirmed he wrote the script after he had finishing filming Chappie in the second half of 2014.

- Independent