Demián Bichir (The Heat, The Bridge) will follow up his bearded, swaddled turn in The Hateful Eight with a trip to outer space, as Deadline reports the actor has just boarded Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (née Alien: Paradise Lost). Bichir joins fellow franchise newcomers Katherine Waterston and Danny McBride, as well as Michael Fassbender, who’s reprising his role as the android David. The details of Bichir’s role haven’t been released; we’d like to imagine that he’ll act as some kind of exo-suit that will allow David’s head to be the film’s Krang, but it’s more likely he’ll serve as the strict officer-type to whatever profanity-spewing hothead McBride will almost certainly play.
Alien: Covenant will pick up ten years after the events of Prometheus, having set aside the promising storyline teased at the end of the first movie, which saw Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) setting off in search of the origin of humanity’s originators (yes, it’s possible she would have succumbed to her injuries or starvation, but that’s probably as easy to explain away as the story of how David’s head gets a new body). There’s no official word on when filming will begin, but it will be Down Under.