Alien Vs Predator: Requiem may have been reviled by fans of both sci-fi horror franchises, but the 2007 face-off was originally set to feature an entire sequence that traveled to the hither-unseen Alien home planet. Released in 2004 shortly after the box office success of Freddy Vs Jason, Alien Vs Predator sounded like another promising fusion of two beloved genre properties. Expectations were heightened by the pedigree of director Paul W.S. Anderson, best known for Event Horizon.
However, the sanitized PG-13 Alien Vs Predator that audiences saw in cinemas disappointed many, leading the studio to increase the gore and body count for the 2007 sequel. Unfortunately, the much more violent but equally-disliked Alien Vs Predator: Requiem soon proved that a Xeno/Predator face-off could still let viewers down even with more gore added into the mix.
According to the movie’s co-writer/director Greg Strause, though, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem originally featured a far superior ending to the coda viewers got – and one that attempted to lead into the action of the original Alien. Alien Vs Predator: Requiem’s pitched ending went to the thus-far unseen homeworld of the titular Xenomorphs for a glimpse at an epic battle sequence, and one that showed off a brand new monster to the franchise too.
Future Skyline co-helmer Strause revealed to io9 during an interview that the ending he pitched alongside his brother and co-writer Colin would have transitioned from the Predator gun viewers see at the movie’s end into the logo of a Weyland-Yutani spaceship. Said ship would have been heading toward the home planet of the Xenomorphs, where an extended ending would have shown an entire tribe of Predators hunting Aliens. Well, more specifically, the Predators would have been pursuing the “Alien King”, a new form of Xenomorph described by Strause as “this huge giant winged alien thing.”
This development may have further complicated the already-strange Xenomorph biology, but it wouldn’t have been the only change to franchise mythology either. Strause wanted the Predator gun to be given to Ms. Yutani at the end of Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, thus allowing humans to reverse engineer space travel technology, essentially make the weapon responsible for much of the tech seen in the Alien series. It may not have been a necessary twist, but this surprise could at least have improved on the lukewarm ending of Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, while setting up a third movie that would have seen Xenomorphs, Predators and humans clashing on the planet that spawned the fearsome, H.R. Giger designed beasts.
