I think it's pretty fair to say that the main person responsible for how the story of Prometheus turned out falls with the writer who swooped in to change Jon Spaihts's script, Damon Lindeloff. I say that because I've read the original Spaihts script for Prometheus and it was a lot better than the film that we finally saw, but there were opportunities along the way to return to Spaihts' script so it's fair to say that Ridley Scott and various others in the studio could have pulled it or pushed back for a rewrite or two.

So it's good news to hear that Lindeloff won't be involved in the sequel to Prometheus, although he's saying he wrote himself out of the sequel before he was even asked, after all he is a busy writer and despite this film he's got a lot of other successful projects on his task list.

Damon Lindeloff's explanation of why he's not returning to the Prometheus universe for the sequel does sound rather logical and, although some might think otherwise, I don't think it sounds like an excuse to get out of writing it or to give a face saving story to get out of not being asked to write it. I think that this sounds like he was going to be writing it and genuinely didn't have the time to devote to it.

Here's what Lindeloff had to say through Collider:

"The thing about Prometheus was it was a rewrite. Jon Spaihts wrote a script and I rewrote it and still it was a year of my life that I spent on Prometheus, kind of all in. The idea of building a sequel to it-from the ground up this time-with Ridley is tremendously exciting but at the same time I was like "Well that's probably going to be two years of my life." I can't do what J.J. [Abrams] does. I don't have the capability. I'm usually very single-minded creatively. I can only be working on one thing at a time. So I said to him "I really don't think I could start working on this movie until I do this other stuff and I don't know when the other stuff is going to be done." and he was like "Well, okay, it's not like I asked you anyways." He and I are on excellent terms and it was a dream come true to work with him. but much to the delight of all the fanboys, I don't see myself being involved in Prometheus-er."

Well perhaps Ridley Scott wasn't going to ask him after all, but if he was then he would have been going against quite a tide of negative commentary about the film, but then that was the break away from the old idea of the Alien franchise and this was going to be branching off into something new, the people who would be following him would either be those happy with Prometheus or those that were interested in seeing where it was going to go, despite their feelings for Prometheus.

What Lindeloff says is interesting though and I love the way he's quick to leap on the bandwagon of using the word "fanboys" to dismiss all negativity about the film and rather odd too considering the same definition applies to all those people who have given so much praise to his work to date, his scripts are aimed at those people he's dismissing with the derogatory term of "fanboys". I find that rather distasteful really.

My apologies but I am not a "fanboy" - whatever that may really be - I like solid stories that hold together, deliver what they promised, aren't silly and don't just confuse the audience and leave them hanging all the time under the premise of mystery. Yes, perhaps you can't do what Abrams does so well, well not in Prometheus that's for sure.

I know though, there are more people in the mix to blame for it and the script could have been turned down or rewritten, but it wasn't and it was Lindeloff's script that went forward. With him not returning to the sequel though the question is now what will Prometheus II look like? I think we can be confident that it will continue to move on from where Alien was, now we're in entirely new territory and there's not even a need for the Prometheus films to return to anything resembling what we saw in Alien.