Ridley Scott reveals his plans for the future of the Alien franchise

Watch the full interview with Ridley Scott interview here on the new People/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN). Go to PEOPLE.com/PEN, or download the PEN app on Apple TV, Roku Players, Amazon Fire TV, Xumo, Chromecast, iOS, and Android devices.

“It’s easier to make people smile and laugh. To really scare the living daylights out of somebody is getting almost impossible,” says Ridley Scott. Sorry, but we’re not convinced it’s so very hard for this famed director, who has been scaring the stuffing out of us since the original 1979 Alien.

With Alien: Covenant out on May 19, Scott returns to the franchise that put him on the cinematic map with a sequel to 2012’s prequel, Prometheus. “I thought about it for 10 years and went back to Fox and said, ‘I think I can resurrect this old guy,” he says.

The storyline laid out by Prometheus and Alien: Covenant — which stars Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Bill Crudup, and Danny McBride, among others — will eventually lead us all back to the events shown in 1979’s Alien. “You’ll know full well by that point who the affectionately termed ‘space jockey’ is,” Scott says. Trivia: that space jockey was made by Swiss artist H.R. Giger — he was part of the team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their designs on Alien. Scott says that decades later he was looking at the pilot’s skeleton and thought, “This could be a space suit.”

Take a look at the video above to hear more on Scott’s plans for the Alien franchise.