20th Century Fox has followed the announcement of Ridley Scott directing a new Alien film by attaching Sin City’s Robert Rodriguez to a new $40 million Predator film. Rodriguez will produce and is writing the film with Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. Nimród Antal, who directed Vacancy is set to helm the new film.

After the last two Aliens Versus Predator films, it looks like Fox executives have finally woken up and realized that insulting fans is no way to make filthy cash! Rodriguez is a brilliant choice and could actually make the best Predator film yet. Antal did a solid job on Vacancy, so Predators is in good hands all around.

Predators is currently scheduled for a July 7, 2010 release.

A companion-gripe to the focus of director James Cameron’s career over the past decade (read what I said about James Cameron), is the path of director Ridley Scott, who gave us two of the greatest sci-fi films of all time (Alien and Blade Runner), then chased after an Oscar for nearly thirty years. I don’t expect anyone to do one genre all the time, in fact I wish they wouldn’t, but when you helped define a genre, it would be nice if you’d visit there once and a while. I’m reminded of photographer Helmut Newton who spent his entire life taking photos of hot fetish women, then wanted us to get excited about his landscape photos late in life. Hey, if you need a break, fine, but don’t expect us to be excited by it.

Variety magazine has reported that Ridley Scott is returning to his roots to resurrect the Alien franchise that has been trashed by a couple of run-ins with Predators. Alien 5 will be a prequel to the first Alien movie. It will be co-produced with brother Tony Scott and written by Jon Spaihts, who apparently was instrumental in pitching the concept to Ridley Scott. Needless to say, I’m excited beyond words to see what Scott does with Alien 5.

Perhaps even bigger news is the explosion of sci-fi scripts from Spaiths, who has ZERO listed writing credits on IMDB.com, yet has this Alien 5 film in production, plus a screenplay for Keanu Reeves’ “Shadow 19″ and space journey epic “Passengers.” Fox hired Spaiths to rewrite Timur Bekmambetov’s project “The Darkest Hour”, Disney hired him to write “Children of Mars” and will also write “St. George and the Dragon.”

Jon Spaihts better be buying Red Bull by the case to keep up with that schedule!