Alien Covenant: James Franco Was Originally Set To Have A Larger Role

Fans who saw Alien: Covenant will recall that the movie actually started out with [SPOILER] James Franco's character dying early on, and it felt like the movie was doing some clever misdirection casting the big-name actor for such a minor role. As it turns out, Franco was supposed to have a larger role in earlier drafts of the script, but was cut out to make the storyline a bit simpler.

In an interview with THR, Covenant screenwriter Dante Harper reveals:

"Originally, James Franco 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. Part of Ridley'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."

Seeing Franco in the movie felt like the cameo he had in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and a lot of fans are probably disappointed to have him absent for most of the film. A lot of people are probably disappointed that he didn't get to share any screentime with Pineapple Express co-star Danny McBride, who was actually one of the better parts of this movie.

In my honest opinion, I kind of hoped that Covenant would continue to delve on the big questions that Prometheus had left unanswered, but instead we got a pretty typical horror/sci-fi movie. Sure Prometheus had its problems, but that movie clearly had some ambition.

Alien: Covenant is currently out in theaters.

See Also: Every Easter Egg And Reference In Alien: Covenant