ChainsawAsh said:

It's my understanding that it's a dark science fiction film taking place in the same universe as the Alien films, set years before the first Alien film. It's not a "prequel" per se in that it isn't directly connected to the events of the main series.

It was implied that the origins of both the 'xenomorphs' and 'space jockey' would be revealed in the 2 prequels that were originally planned. But with this latest 'Prometheus' proposal, there's a possibility that both these elements will remain a mystery now, if they even feature at all...

I'm interested to see if this will be the case...but if it is, then I sure hope some inferior, hack director isn't given the opportunity to follow-up this latest movie of Ridley's with the actual 'explanations' of how they came about...