Sigourney Weaver wowed the audience at her New York Comic Con panel by admitting that she’s more than open to returning to the Alien universe – in fact she’s met with franchise owner Disney about it.

Weaver told the audience at a panel covering her sci-fi film roles on Friday that what made her consider bringing Ellen Ripley out of retirement was seeing the beginning of a script for the potential sequel written by the producer of all of the Alien films, Walter Hill.

Walter Hill is a very good friend of mine, and he wrote 50 pages of where Ripley would be now, and they’re quite extraordinary,” Weaver said, adding “I think it’s a very strong first 50 pages. I’m thinking about working with Walter to see what the rest of the story would be.”

Nothing is final yet, of course. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I have had a meeting with Fox or Disney,” Weaver said. “I’ve never felt the need [to play Ripley again]. I was always like, ‘Let her rest, let her recover.’ What Walter has written seems so true to me, as very much about the society that would incarcerate someone who has tried to help mankind, but she’s a problem to them, so she’s sort of tucked away.”

This contradicts her previous statement, made in 2023 when director Neill Blomkamp was planning a sequel that never made it to the screen. Weaver said of returning to the role, “that ship has sailed.” Weaver last played Ripley in 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. She also appeared in the franchise opener, Alien (1979), and came back as Ripley for Aliens (1986), and Alien 3 in 1992.

Weaver is 76 now, and said in the proposed sequel, she “would not be running around airshafts – it would be a very different kind of Alien. Scary, of course; the Alien does show up – inevitable. But I love what he’s (Hill) done with the character. He really gets her strength and her anger and her humor, and it’s very hard to write, and surprisingly hard to write Ripley.”

The franchise so far has continued on without Weaver – and Ripley, with films like Alien: Covenant, and Alien: Romulus, and this year the films spawned a series on FX and Hulu called Alien: Earth.