The marketing materials may tell us otherwise, but by-and-large Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” is a prequel to his “Alien” series.

There’s quite a few connections to the quadrilogy in the new film, least of which is the inclusion of the ‘Space Jockey’ character that debuted in 1979′s “Alien” (and the last ten minutes or so of the film are directly linked to the latter), and now Scott has revealed another : Guy Pearce’s role in the film works for the same company that Paul Reiser and Lance Henriksen’s characters did in “Aliens” and “Alien 3″, respectively.

IC Press (via Bleeding Cool and AVP Galaxy) spoke to the filmmaker, who said :

When the first Alien movie and Blade Runner were made, I thought that in the near future the world will be owned by large companies. This is why we have the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner, and Weyland-Yutani in Alien. They sent the Nostromo spaceship.

The Prometheus is owned by an entrepreneur called Peter Weyland, and is played by Guy Pearce. That’s the connection between the two films, and nothing more. Prometheus is a new film, a new world, and is full of new ideas. And of course new monsters as well.

Exciting news for “Prometheus”, but also Guy Pearce – who has a blockbustery year lined up; among his efforts, he’s also the star of Luc Besson’s space-actioner “Lock Out”.