Well, he is and he isn’t: Ridley Scott’s long-in-the-planning-and-reporting prequel to Alien is now called something else—goodbye Paradise, hello Prometheus—and is being pitched as something “more original.” According to Deadline, the initial idea from screenwriter John Spaihts, since updated by Damon Lindelof, has morphed into something else entirely: In Scott's words, Prometheus will still carry “strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak,” but the film will concern an all-new “grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place.”
There’s still no word yet on what exactly that story will be, of course, but it seems those earlier casting reports that tied Noomi Rapace (as “Elizabeth Shaw”) and potentially Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron (as “Vickers”) remain intact, so it's likely to follow some of the same basic plotlines that have been rumored—only presumably without the attempts to tie it to the “space jockey” glimpsed in the 1979 film, which Scott has long mentioned as this story's impetus. For Scott’s part, he says this sort-of-new film is “the singular tale I’ve been searching for,” while Lindelof adds that it’s “daring, visceral and hopefully, the last thing anyone expects.” Well, seeing as everyone expected an Alien prequel, mission already accomplished. Whatever it ends up being, Prometheus is due out on March 9, 2012.