Box office Alien: Covenant grossed a worldwide total of $240.9 million, including $74.3 million in the United States and Canada and $166.6 million in other countries, against a production budget of $97–111 million. Fox released the film in several countries before the United States. It was released in 34 markets, where it debuted to $40.1 million, opening at number one in 19 of them. Its overall rank for the weekend was second behind the continued run of
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The top openings were in South Korea ($7.2 million), the UK ($6.4 million), France ($4.5 million), Australia ($3.1 million), and Mexico ($2.5 million). In North America, the film was released alongside
Everything, Everything and
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, another 20th Century Fox film, and was projected to gross around $40 million from 3,760 theaters during its opening weekend. It made $4.3 million from Thursday-night previews at about 3,000 theaters, and $15.4 million overall on its first day, which was below the $21.5 million Friday of
Prometheus five years prior. It went on to open to $36.2 million, down 30% from
Prometheuss debut, but still finishing first at the box office, In its second weekend, the film grossed $10.5 million, finishing fourth at the box office and dropping 70.9%. The film was pulled from 1,112 theaters in its third weekend and dropped another 62.3%, finishing sixth at the box office with $4 million.
Critical response and
Walter, was highly praised by reviewers.
Alien: Covenant received generally positive reviews from critics. The film has approval from reviews compiled by review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "
Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions." On
Metacritic, the film has a score of 65 out of 100, based on reviews from 52 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor. Geoffrey McNab, writing for
The Independent, stated that it "certainly delivers what you'd expect from an
Aliens film—spectacle, body horror, strong
Ripley-like female protagonists and some astonishing special effects—but there's also a dispiriting sense that the film isn't at all sure of its own identity." He found the screenplay "very portentous" and concluded that "the crew members pitted against the monstrous creatures are trying their darndest to blast them to kingdom come, just as they would in any run-of-the-mill sci-fi B movie."
A. O. Scott of
The New York Times said, "
Alien: Covenant is an interesting movie ... for all its interplanetary ranging, [it] commits itself above all to the canny management of expectations." Trace Thurman, from
Bloody Disgusting, gave the film a mediocre review, noting that although watching
Alien: Covenant will make viewers appreciate
Prometheus more, "this is a film that was made as a response to
Prometheus critics but tries to appease fans of that film as well and it doesn't fully work." He also criticizes the overfamiliarity of the climax and insufficiently developed characters.
Colliders review of the film stated that Scott "finds himself stuck between two constructs—the action-horror beats of an
Alien film, and the weighty, ponderous themes of a
Prometheus movie—and by indulging both, he never fully satisfies either. The result is a messy film that is at turns, exquisite and infuriating." In a review for
The Independent Clarisse Loughrey gave the film five stars describing it as "relentless and overwhelming, but all in the very best of ways" and as a "mightily impressive piece of cinematic engineering" which has brought together the Alien franchise. Loughrey praised Katherine Waterston for her "impressive work" as Daniels and went on to single out Fassbender for playing a "deeply frightening, scene-stealing antagonist". Sinead Brennan for
RTÉ, gave the film 7/10, but gave high praise to Fassbender who she says "steals the show; seriously, he's incredible". Meanwhile, Neil Soans in a three star review for
The Times of India, highlighted Danny McBride's performance as the most surprising given his comedic roots.
Matt Zoller Seitz of
RogerEbert.com highly praised
Alien: Covenant, giving it four out of four stars and stating that the film's structure, although repeatedly borrowing from other
Alien films, serves a purpose not unlike the
James Bond film series or
Star Wars, "where part of the fun lies in seeing what variations the artists can bring while satisfying a rigid structure." He also emphasized that, like previous films of the series, real-world logic should not be applied to the film, and "[i]nstead you have to judge it by the standards of a
fever dream or nightmare, a
Freudian-
Jungian narrative where the thing you fear most is what happens to you." Seitz later voted for it in
Sight & Sound as one of the five best films of 2017. In
New York magazine,
David Edelstein commented on David the android as representing a new generation of monster villains in the tradition of
Frankenstein, stating, "In
Star Trek, that man-machine nexus was...hopeful. Here, there's some doubt about David's ultimate motives, which puts
Alien: Covenant squarely in the tradition of the
Terminator and
Matrix movies. And, of course, the novel
Frankenstein, which carried the subtitle
The Modern Prometheus. No less than
Stephen Hawking—who survived with the aid of machines—has predicted that we have 100 years to live before evolved machines take human imperfection as
justification for destroying humanity". Kevin Lincoln, writing for
Vulture, gave a strong endorsement of the depiction of David as an arch-villain in the film stating, "...one franchise is showing it's still possible for a modern blockbuster to have a great villain. In
Alien: Covenant, David—the android played by Michael Fassbender, first introduced in
Prometheus—comes into his own as a fleshed-out, dynamic, and genuinely striking antagonist, one who isn't just an equal match for the heroes, but even becomes the central thread of the series. He's a huge part of what makes
Alien: Covenant work." Writing for
Vox, Alissa Wilkinson said that "
Alien: Covenant is too muddled to pull off its deeply ambitious Satan allegories". She emphasized the
Miltonic demonic aspect of the android David: "But David is a better Satan than Satan himself ... It's as if in the
Alien universe, the devil has evolved, thanks to humans creating him. David, fatally, has the ability to create—something Satan never had—and he will use that power only to destroy. He doesn't have any real need to rebel against his maker, since from the moment he became sentient, he knew he'd already won. He is indestructible, and determined to make creatures that imitate his drive for total domination."
Accolades == Future ==