Fox Loves Damon Lindelof’s ‘Alien’ Prequel Script, Wants Natalie Portman to Star

“Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof delighted Fox executives Saturday by turning in an apparently very good script for Ridley Scott’s “Alien” prequel.

Nondisclosure agreements about the plot have been signed by everyone involved but The Vulture was able to intercept a few details.

The film is set 35 years before Scott’s original 1979 horror/sci-fi classic and is especially enticing to studio big-wigs because it contains no expensive set pieces. Scott as purportedly asked for a budget between $150 million and $160 million, but Lindelof’s script may allow Fox to cut that down considerably — something studios love to do.

Scott has met with a number of actresses about taking on the lead role, a female Colonial Marine general, but one in particular stands at the top of the heap — Natalie Portman. Having recently freed herself from Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” Portman’s schedule is clean to pick up the female ass-kicker mantle from Sigourney Weaver. Also being considered is Noomi Rapace, star of David Fincher’s upcoming version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”

Die hard fans may also be happy to know that the tone of Lindelof’s script is much more in line with Scott’s original film than its more action-centered sequels. “The later Aliens movies were action movies, but the original Alien was a horror-suspense film,” explains one source, “This returns the franchise to its roots.”

And last but not least, fans will finally get an answer about the origin of the “Space Jockey,” i.e. the mangled pilot of a crashed spacecraft with thousands of alien eggs strewn about discovered in the year 2090 by the crew of the Nostromo.