While Ridley Scott's Alien not-quite-prequel Prometheus was a box office success, many fans walked away disappointed with what they considered to be plot holes and unrealistic elements. Most of the blame was laid at the feet of screenwriter Damon Lindelof, as fans expected him to maintain the high standards of tight plotting and unflinching realism he brought to Cowboys & Aliens.
So now Lindelof has taken his ball and gone home, protesting that he's too busy working on the Star Trek franchise and Brad Bird's Tomorrowland—and anyway, it was all Scott's fault. Also, the finale of Lost was great, shut up.
Presumably after plans to clone Alien's late screenwriter Dan O'Bannon ended in failure, Scott has finally hired a new writer. Jack Paglen burst onto the scene last year with a screenplay called Transcendence, which made the infamous Black List of the year's best unproduced scripts. That script is now being made into a film for 2014 release with Johnny Depp, Kate Mara, and Paul Bettany, and Paglen will follow it with Prometheus 2, although details of when it will burst forth from the metaphorical chest of the multiplex are still forthcoming.