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A monstrous sci-fi horror stages a hostile takeover on Disney Plus

The Mouse House keeps the door wide open for R-rated content.

alien covenant
via 20th Century Fox

The Alien and Predator franchises will always be inextricably linked, having crossed over so many times across comic books, video games, and feature films, so it’s fitting that Ridley Scott’s Covenant would be embarking on a charge up the Disney Plus charts at the exact same time Dan Trachtenberg’s acclaimed Prey is tearing up the platform’s viewership rankings.

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As per FlixPatrol, the sixth installment in the franchise and second chapter in the prequel trilogy that’s looking as though it’ll never end up being completed has scored multiple Top 10 finishes around the world via the international Star expansion, with subscribers hankering for Alien and Predator individually, a wise choice when the duology pitting them against each other was questionable to say the least.

Covenant turned out to be a lot less polarizing than Prometheus, but it was also a lot less successful at the box office, earning a disappointing $240 million at the box office on a budget hovering around the $100 million mark, a fairly hefty drop from the $403 million hauled in by its predecessor. Scott talked up more entries, but the focus now appears to be on Noah Hawley’s TV series instead.

Seemingly taking the criticism to heart that Prometheus was in danger of disappearing up its own ass, Scott retrofitted Covenant into more of a straightforward Alien flick, and fans were left about as impressed as you’d expect from a sci-fi horror saga that continues to motor along churning out new installments almost 45 years after the filmmaker launched the IP with his all-time classic haunted house in space chiller.