‘Alien: Covenant’ Celebrates Ridley Scott’s Birthday With New Set Photo

Today marks the 78th birthday of Ridley Scott — hard to believe, considering the director’s impressively ceaseless output and the frequency with which he releases new films, matched only by fellow icons such as Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. To celebrate Scott’s day of birth, 20th Century Fox has unveiled a new set photo from Alien: Covenant, in which the director poses in front of a very familiar set-up.

As you can see, Scott — looking very much the part of director — is standing in the foreground of a set that features the reclining Space Jockey, also known as The Pilot. That particular design first appeared in Alien, which gave us a tantalizingly brief glimpse at the mysterious creature:

The Space Jockey was originally part of James Cameron’s script for Aliens, and was also meant to be featured more prominently in Prometheus before the setting of the Alien prequel was changed from planet LV-426 to LV-223 — thus the Space Jockey was transformed into the last Engineer, who shared a climactic scene with Michael Fassbender’s David.

Alien: Covenant features a new colony crew led by Katherine Waterston. When that crew stumbles upon a remote planet, they make an unnerving discovery in this seemingly uncharted paradise: David is the planet’s sole inhabitant. The new Alien prequel also stars Danny McBride, Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Jussie Smollett, Amy Seimetz and Carmen Ejogo, with Prometheus star Noomi Rapace reprising her role as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. Fassbender is also rumored to be playing the dual role of a second lifelike synthetic droid named Walter, who doesn’t hold the same mischievous beliefs as his identical counterpart.

In addition to the new photo above, the release date for Alien: Covenant was recently moved up from October 2017 to May 19.