There is a set of 3 books in which a Ripley-bot was built (Aliens: Earth Hive, Aliens: Nightmare Asylum, The Aliens: The Female War), and I believe it takes place after A3. I always thought this was an excellent story that could probably be adapted into a 2:15-2:30 movie. In fact, I liked all of the Aliens books I read.

Suffice it to say... there is a huge passion for the ALIEN franchise, it is not dead. There are so many potential story lines and directions that this series can go. With Scott on board I hope that it doesn't means a return to "Let's Watch and See if we can pick the survivor" I'd much rather see a choesive story line that pulls together elements from the prior films. 1. What is the big alien from "Alien" do we use the comics version or something else? 2. What is the role of the military "Aliens and Alien Resurrection"? 3. What is the role of the corporation "Alien III"? 4. What's up with Earth "Alien Resurrection"? Point is don't scrap anything, incorporate and make it better tie together the films and present a huge intreaguing challenge to us viewers!!! Here's to hoping a franchise is re-energized!!!

I wouldn't mind an Alien 5 with human/alien hybrid Ripley. At the end of Alien Resurrection, Ripley finally returning to Earth for the first time since supposedly before the first movie, I got the feeling of reconciliation in Ripley between her two conflicting natures. Now I do admit that while the Newt, Hicks and Bishop characters are irreplacable, they did create a pretty high potential character with Winona Ryder's character Call. Call was so much like Ripley used to be, and with Winona Ryder aging very gracefully, I think she would carry on Ripley's mantle pretty well, in case of more sequels in the franchize. In my idea of Alien 5, Ripley and Call would return. Weaver is obviously aging, but that's ok as long as they have the Ripley character age as well, instead of trying to make her look as young as she used to. They could even make her look old on purpose - maybe even dying due to some rapid aging factor in the Human/Alien gene setup. As for Winona Ryder's aging, they could simply explain it with that the latest models of Synthetics were made so realistic their bodies even aged to an extent. I could imagine a scenario where Ripley is inclined to seek out the biomechanoid beings that first carried the alien eggs in the first movie. Ridley Scott hinted that the Derelict ship was indeed on it's way to Earth hundreds of years ago to deploy the alien eggs as a bio weapon. I imagine to cleanse the planet in order to repopulate it, but that something went wrong and the sole crewman, the Space Jockey was infected and killed. The biomechs in Alien 5 would now become the REAL enemy, the REAL aliens. It would be refreshing because with today's 3D FX, we've seen the Aliens, we know all about them. They're cool, but hardly scary and evocative anymore. The re-introduction of the Biomechs would bring back all the sense of Unknown, all the mystery. How do you portrait a species, that can for example meld into a ship, BECOME the ship, and seemingly inanimate, except that it has a mind, an agenda, a drive unlike any cybernetic, robot or computer. Unlike the above mentioned, the biomechs wouldn't be cybernetically enhanced lifeforms. They would have evolved that way from scratch. I keep thinking of mineral formations in deep caves. Across millennia they "grow" into intricate shapes, looking almost like plants or corals, yet they aren't by science considered alive. Or are they? Could the biomech lifeforms have evolved from such a phenomenon? In this sense, there is a lot in this for Call as well as for Ripley. Call, a seemingly organic machine, with a mind of her own. She can interact with man made machinery and enter a cyperspace only she can percieve. (Like when she melded with Auriga's ship computer, "Father".) This is how I see her team up with Ripley once again. And the hope that the two great directors Ridley Scott and James Cameron will team up for this one, finishing off the franchize with a bang, is still burning in me. AVP has not ruined the franchize. It's a mere sidestory - a high budget fanfiction movie, made by people who have no clue of what Ridley Scott intended with the first movie. I don't care about them. GIVE ME my Alien 5 dammit!