Inside Ridley Scott’s Producing Empire: “Tell Me the Film in Two Sentences”

When pitching a movie to Ridley Scott, you had better be quick about it. The 86-year-old has a lot on his plate, after all. 

“I say, ‘Narrow it down to something very simple and brief — tell me the film in two sentences,’ ” says the renowned and prolific British director of such films as Blade Runner, Alien and Napoleon. “You should light the idea up, and within that you’ve got to have a fuse — a time bomb. When you just have [characters] doing something for something’s sake, that’s dangerous.” 

A lit fuse could be, for instance, a group of young scavengers trapped on a derelict space station that’s going to crash into a planet’s rings in 36 hours — the plot of the summer hit Alien: Romulus, which was produced by Scott and his Scott Free production company and surprised the industry by earning $350 million globally.

The movie also is an example of Scott Free’s recent streak of finding new life in the director’s legacy titles, such as FX’s upcoming Alien: Earth series from Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley, Amazon’s upcoming Blade Runner: 2099 series from showrunner Silka Luisa, and Scott’s own highly anticipated Gladiator II — the long-awaited sequel to his 2000 blockbuster, which opens Nov. 22, and which the director has called “the best thing I’ve ever made.”

“Gladiator is under budget,” Scott says proudly and holds up all his fingers to reveal by how many millions: “10.” (Paramount insiders have said the net budget was $250 million.) And, of course, Scott already is developing another sequel.

When Scott is asked how he feels about stepping back into a producer role while some of the cinematic worlds he’s helped create become TV shows led by others, the man is surprisingly at peace with it all. “I’ve created the pace visually for a while,” says Scott, who spends his time between L.A. and France. “I know exactly what I’ve done and how it has been influential. And from that, I can’t hope for anything more other than to keep it alive. I don’t care what the platform is. I’m keen to go home and watch it. All these subjects are embalmed forever, and that’s very healthy.”

Scott Free in its current form has been around since 1995, but its roots go back to the ’70s. “The name ‘Scott Free’ was originally my brother’s company name,” Scott says, referring to his late brother, director Tony Scott. “I said, ‘That’s a great name; why don’t we take that and start a company for longform?’ ”

During a sit-down with Scott Free’s leadership at their longtime offices in West Hollywood, the company’s executives say that amid post-pandemic industry contraction, they actually expanded on all fronts. “We saw it as a time to grow,” says Scott Free president and COO Justin Alvarado Brown. “We pushed forward when everybody was pulling back, and we were also fortunate we had a lot of things going into production that year that allowed us to do that.” 

If there’s a common thread among Scott Free productions, executives say it’s making literary, filmmaker-driven projects that seem worthy of having Sir Ridley Scott in their credits. “Whenever we look at material, it needs to feel authored, it needs to feel like there’s some kind of signature in the writing,” says president of film Michael Pruss. “We get sent every sci-fi and action film under the sun because of Ridley, but we’re truly genre-agnostic. We’re just looking for things that are unique or interesting that feel indelible.” 

That said, Scott points out that when selecting projects, he doesn’t believe in magic formulas and says it’s always like spinning a roulette wheel (at least, to some extent). “All of this is putting money on black,” Scott says. “In other words: It’s intuition and research, but beyond that, you don’t really know.” 

For Alien: Romulus, Scott saw his role as a helpful guiding force for director Fede Álvarez, who in a recent interview said Scott suggested making cuts to an early edit of the film that made him “kick the wall.” Then Álvarez realized Scott’s ideas were right and made them. 

“I can sniff out something that’s maybe too intellectual, or not intellectual enough,” Scott says. “Knowing the extremes is partly my job. Also, knowing when something is too long or too complex. That’s where I come in as a producer — really, as an editor. In that respect, I’m always respectful of the director, and if you’re respectful, they’ll listen to you.” 

One unique aspect of Scott Free is that it is essentially independent — the shingle hasn’t had a studio partnership since 2009, though it’s had a first-look agreement with 20th Century for decades that Scott Free recently renewed in a multiyear deal. “We don’t have a studio that’s telling us, ‘You can do this, you can’t do that,’ ” notes chief creative officer David Zucker. “First-look deals give us a chance to get on a more inevitable track toward production, but the idea is to make sure we’re putting the project first. It’s kind of a parenting model: What’s in the best interest of the child? So when we meet with talent, we’re like, ‘How can we see this to success?’ ” 

One sore spot for Scott and his team is their lack of ownership in the Alien and Blade Runner franchises, something the director blames on some of his company’s previous management. Scott Free has to re-earn its spot on the team whenever a new sequel or prequel is explored. “I should have locked them up, as [Steven] Spielberg did with Jurassic, and everything he does, and James Cameron has done with what he has,” Scott says. “I resurrected a dead Alien [franchise] with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and we should have rejoined the ownership right then, and we didn’t, because someone was careless.” 

Brown adds that it’s incumbent upon his team to ensure Scott Free stays involved in the director’s legacy titles. “It would make no sense that another movie is made without Ridley and us,” he says of future Alien and Blade Runner entries.

When asked what is working on the small screen, president of TV Clayton Krueger says, “We often find that in TV, it’s not an idea business as much as it is an execution business. And so that’s where we put a lot of our effort — identifying the artists that we know can deliver a series.” But, naturally, Scott gives a more blunt assessment: “TV is a massive basket full of balls,” he says. “Every now and again something comes up like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones that influences everybody, who then rushes to that ball to copy it and it’s already too late. That’s how I function as a director — what’s the next ball?”

One painful bit of news was HBO Max axing the company’s acclaimed sci-fi drama Raised by Wolves after two seasons in 2022. “It was deeply frustrating,” Krueger says. “We really were creatively positioned to start up. We had broken the season, we had the team together. We felt like the show really found its footing.” 

Scott’s longtime track record with 20th, now owned by Disney, isn’t an accident. The director’s first hit, 1979’s Alien, was at the studio, and he’s been loyal to the company through many upheavals over the decades. “I think I’ve done 13 films for Fox, which may be the highest number any director has done for a studio,” Scott says. “It’s a bit like opening a restaurant. When they pay your overhead, you better eat there every night. I eat at my table every night with Fox. I think that’s why I’ve been valuable to them. You win some, you lose some, but overall, they have been rewarded for what I do.”

20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell certainly appreciates Scott’s commitment, having first worked with the director on 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven. “There is no more innovative, courageous or ferocious film producer in the business,” Asbell says. “He and Tony crafted Scott Free to reflect their creative integrity as filmmakers, and the company has long been a cornerstone of 20th’s production output.”

While Scott Free isn’t exactly a family business, Scott’s 55-year-old son, Luke Scott, is based in its U.K. office and handles the company’s advertising components and long-range strategies and is a director as well (“I’m the overlord,” he jokes). Scott’s 46-year-old daughter, director Jordan Scott, wrote and directed their recent adaptation of Nicholas Hogg’s psychological cult thriller A Sacrifice. And 59-year-old son Jake Scott helmed the 2021 documentary Kipchoge: The Last Milestone. 

Scott Free’s instantly recognizable, watercolor-style vanity card — depicting a shadowy figure pacing and smoking before turning into a bird — was made by Italian artist Gianluigi Toccafondo. Scott recently reenlisted the artist for some rousing animated opening credits for Gladiator II. “I called him up and asked, ‘Are you still alive and want to do this?’ ” Scott recalls. “I had him animate elements from [the original] Gladiator so now you’re ‘being entertained’ before [the action even starts].” 

Scott’s next project is his long-gestating biopic about 1970s disco supergroup the Bee Gees, which will begin shooting early next year for Paramount. His busy schedule means Scott Free is continuing to hunt for other top filmmakers to tackle their projects under development (one name on the company’s dream list of collaborators: Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy). “I know what I’m doing for the next three years,” Scott says. “They’re written and ready to go. So now we should be looking for big directors who can handle these kinds of budgets. You can have the best horse in the world, but if you ain’t got a good jockey, the horse ain’t going to win.” 

His company is developing some projects it would love for Scott to personally tackle and has been specifically trying to help Scott fulfill his dream of directing a Western (over the years, Scott Free has developed Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and, on the TV side, Hampton Sides’ Western epic Blood and Thunder, but neither was greenlit). “I’m a Western fanatic,” Scott says, “and I haven’t done that yet.”

Period pieces, Scott’s executives note, continue to be the toughest projects to sell. “One friend said about period projects: ‘They never buy it, but they always make it,’ ” Zucker says, and points to the recent success of FX’s Shogun as one enviable example.

Looking ahead, the team has several films in postproduction — including Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water (starring Imogen Poots, about a swimmer struggling to escape an abusive upbringing), director Michael Pearce’s Echo Valley (starring Julianne Moore as a mother going to extreme lengths to cover up a murder), and director Michael Dowse’s Trap House (starring Dave Bautista and Bobby Cannavale as undercover DEA agents whose rebellious teenagers rob a dangerous cartel).

Scott also revealed he’s developing a new Alien movie for 20th in the wake of Romulus’ success, plus a Battle of Britainfilm being written by Joe Penhall, as well as the previously announced thriller Bomb from Kevin McMullin. 

On the TV side, Scott Free recently released the nonfiction documentary At Witt’s End: The Hunt for a Killer on Hulu and wrapped a third season of AMC’s The Terror anthology series (titled The Terror: Devil in Silver), with a fourth season in development. It also has two Apple TV+ projects in the works: Peter Craig’s Dope Thief (formerly Sinking Spring), starring Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura as two friends who pose as DEA agents to rob a narcotics operation (Scott directed the pilot), and Steve Thompson’s Prime Target, starring Leo Woodall as a mathematics student who discovers a revolutionary hacking algorithm. The company also is making inroads into the reality space, particularly looking into opportunities to spin off iconic scripted projects into unscripted ideas (à la Squid Game: The Challenge). 

“Everything that we are doing is half chaos, half magic,” Pruss says. “I love the fact that we are still trying to push the envelope a bit and we are reaching for things that we haven’t done before.” 

This story appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.