The crazy twist ending of the horror sci-fi movie Life could create something entirely more durable than a many-tentacled alien who can breathe in space. If the screenwriters of the film get their way, Life could end up becoming a film franchise with multiple sequels.
Spoilers for Life ahead.
On March 26, the screenwriters of Life — Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick — were asked by The Hollywood Reporter if they could see a larger franchise in the vein of James Cameron’s Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Their answer? Reese said, “Completely … we would love to be involved.” Because Life kills literally all of its main characters before the end of the film, a sequel seems a little unlikely at first. But because the alien-tentacle monster antagonist “Calvin” is still alive, a sequel is more than possible; it’s totally set up by the end of the movie. Jake Gyllenhaal’s space pod has crashed into the sea, and innocent fishermen are about to crack it open and unleash Calvin onto the human population.
The screenwriters think that at this point Calvin can “reproduce,” so presumably, a sequel to Life could show a ravaged Earth totally under control of multiple monsters exactly like the one in the first movie. The Hollywood Reporter notes this would be similar to the contrast between Alien and Aliens insofar as the first film showed a “contained” world, which was expanded on in the second film.
As of yet, there are no plans for a Life sequel. Meanwhile, Reese and Wernick are hard at work on the screenplay for Deadpool 2.
