PARIS • Alien creator Ridley Scott has said he is convinced that there are aliens out there - and one day they could come to Earth.

The veteran director said last week that he believes in higher beings as he prepared to release the sixth episode of the sci-fi horror series, Alien: Covenant, this month.

"I believe in superior beings. I think it is certainly likely. An expert I was talking to at Nasa (the American space agency) said to me: 'Have you ever looked at the sky at night? You mean to tell me we are it?' That's ridiculous.

"The experts have now put a number on it, having assessed what is out there. They say there are between 100 and 200 entities that could be having a similar evolution to us right now.

"So when you see a big thing in the sky, run for it," he joked.

"Because they are a lot smarter than we are and if you are stupid enough to challenge them, you will be taken out in three seconds."

Alien: Covenant, the second of the prequel films, is set in 2104 on board a spaceship carrying 2,000 cryogenically frozen colonists to a distant planet, where they chance upon an uncharted paradise.

But their voyage soon turns into a nightmare that makes Alien's original "chestbuster" scene seem tame in comparison.

The aliens in the new film are based on the goblin shark, "which has a jaw which hinges in two ways. It's scary, hideous beyond belief actually", Scott said.

The 79-year-old British director - who was also the brains behind 1982 sci-fi movie Blade Runner - said he never tires of scaring people out of their skins.

"When I did the first Alien (1979), I had to get a sense of responsibility because the reaction to the kitchen scene with John Hurt (where his character's chest is split open by an alien getting out) was beyond anything I expected - and it was not good," he told Agence FrancePresse.

"But the film was very successful because people are perverse."

He said he could not believe the terror he had created when he went to see people watching the film.

"Everybody was half underneath the seat watching by the time you got to the kitchen scene. There was a woman underneath the seat with her husband holding her.

"I said this is not healthy."

Scott, however, claimed he is unshockable.

"Nothing scares me. I have a 9mm (pistol)," he said. "If there is a problem, I tend to close down into calm."

What is a nightmare for him then?

"When you walk in, in the morning, on a film and 600 people turn and all look at you, that is scary."

Alien: Covenant - which opens in cinemas in Singapore on May 10 - has a religious subtext, the director insisted.

He said he is agnostic, but this did not stop him making a film about Moses, called Exodus: Gods And Kings, in 2014.

"Either religion is the greatest trick played on mankind. Or it is not, and that poses some great questions, and this film is a great context for those," he said.

The movie sees Irish actor Michael Fassbender returning to his role as the cerebral android David, which he played in the last prequel, Prometheus, in 2012. But this time, with a twist.

Scott uses him to pose questions about the nature of humans.

Fassbender had said in an earlier interview: "There is an artist in there somewhere. There's definitely an ego in there... So again these are very human things."

"We all want to leave something behind after we go. There's a legacy of some sort that we've left behind," he added.

On the subject of stamping his own mark, Scott is about to make a film about another form of horror - the Battle of Britain during World War II, when the Royal Air Force fought off the waves of bombings from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's planes.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE