Alien fans eager to see Neil Blomkamp's take on the iconic franchise were hit with some bad news today. The District 9 director announced on Twitter that Alien 5 has been put on hold and that he will move on to other projects in the meantime.

"Alien is kinda holding/ pending prometheus 2. So I shall be working on other things... as much as I love the xeno- and Lt ripley." He wrote.

According to Deadline, franchise creator Ridley Scott's decision to reimagine Prometheus 2 is what led to the hold order.

Originally, the Prometheus sequel was going to pick up where the first left off, following Noomi Rapace's character Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and Michael Fassbender's android David as they dive deeper into the mysteries uncovered in the original.

The second Prometheus film will instead be called Alien: Paradise Lost, and function more as a true prequel to the rest of the alien franchise.

Last month, Deadline was able to speak with Scott, who was there to promote his latest film The Martian. He revealed a few new pieces of information about where he wants to take Paradise Lost.

'You can either say, leave the first film alone and jump ahead, but you can't because it ends on too specific a plot sentence as she says, I want to go where they came from, I don't want to go back to where I came from. I thought the subtext of that film was a bit florid and grandiose, but it asks a good question: who created us? I don't think we are here by accident. I find it otherwise hard to believe you and I are sitting here at this table, because the molecular miracles that would have had to occur were in the trillions, since the first sign of human life that crawled out of the mud with four fingers, would bloody well be impossible, unless there was some guidance system.'