Sir Ridley Scott has finally come forward with some concrete (or at least wet cement) details on his long-awaited (or not?) prequel to his 1979 masterpiece, Alien.  Speaking with MTV, Scott riffed on the current progress of the script, plot details, whether or not original Alien designer H.R. Giger will be involved, and of course the Space Jockey. 

On the script:

“As we speak, I’ve got a pile of pages next to me; it’s like the fourth
draft. It’s a work in progress, but we’re not dreaming it up anymore.
We know what the story is….There’s no question about it, we’re going to make the film.”

The setting and the other alien, aka the “Space Jockey”:

It’s set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney [Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley]. It’s fundamentally about going out to find out ‘Who the hell was that Space Jockey?’ The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer’s chair. Remember that?

On the protagonist:

Well, the main character [in the prequel] will be a woman, yeah. We’re
thinking it could go down that route, yeah. When I started the original
“Alien,” Ripley wasn’t a woman, it was a guy. During casting, we
thought, “Why don’t we make it a woman?”

On Giger’s role:

“Yeah, he’s still around. Once I get more serious and get going, and the
big wheels start turning, we’ll certainly talk. And maybe we’ll come up
with something completely different.”

There’s quite a bit more.  You can click over here for the entire read.

Thanks to Joey for the tip.