Yahoo News James Franco was meant to have a much larger Alien role
There is a minor Alien: Covenant spoiler in this article... BEWARE...
Alien: Covenant screenwriter Dante Harper has revealed that James Franco's Captain Branson role was actually meant to be much bigger.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Harper explained: "Originally, the James Franco character was part of what was a larger storyline, involving learning a little more about his background and actually getting to see some of his dreams that he'd had while he was asleep.
"It had to do with the backstory of both Daniels [Katherine Waterson] as well as Billy Crudup's character, Oram."
He went on: "Part of Ridley [Scott's] idea was that this was a ship that not only had this external problem, but it also had this problem that there was this captain who was not the original captain who is now going to lead the mission and maybe make some terrible mistakes.
"The James Franco character is in that teaser a good bit more and I think in different versions of the screenplay as it went along, he had a larger role, but his role was always to be an absent captain."
Meanwhile, Covenant has scraped its way to the top spot of the US box office in its opening weekend, but failed to perform at the level of 2012's Prometheus or 2004's Alien vs. Predator.
Scott's latest Alien movie grossed $36 million this weekend to take the top spot – but only just, as it edged out Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 from the summit after three weeks by just over $1 million dollars.
While it was expected to make a little less than Prometheus's opening of $51m, purely because that film was much more of a mystery to fans before it opened, making less than Alien vs Predator's $38.2 million opening was a bit unexpected.
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