prometheus - Why did Ridley Scott decide on doing a prequel?

One of Ridley
Scott's most exclaimed science fiction movies is Alien. It's also one of the few movies
that does not have a city scape. When involved in the re-release in 2003 he started to
want to direct another Alien movie. It's states on his wiki though that he wasn't happy
with the Director's Cut because he found the original pretty flawless. So why would he
make a prequel then?

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class="normal">Answer

It's not actually a
prequel, but rather is set in the same universe but earlier in the time line. He made
the coice to not make a direct prequel to essentially avoid being repetative in the
material.

From href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28film%29">Wikipedia:

The film began development in the early 2000s as a fifth entry in
the
Alien franchise, with both Scott and director James Cameron
developing
ideas for a film that would serve as a prequel to Scott's 1979
science
fiction horror film Alien. By 2003, the project was sidelined by
the
development of Alien vs. Predator, and remained dormant until
2009
when Scott again showed interest. A script by Spaihts acted as
a
prequel to the events of the Alien films, but Scott opted for a

different direction to avoid repeating cues from those films. In late
2010,
he brought Lindelof onto the project to rewrite Spaihts' script,
and together
they developed a separate story that precedes the story
of Alien but is not
directly connected to that franchise. According to
Scott, though the film
shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak",
and takes place in the same
universe, Prometheus will explore its own
mythology and
ideas.