[UPDATED 5/8/12]  Deadline is reporting that Fox has indeed confirmed the R rating for Prometheus.  This is an enormous risk for Fox.  Now we just need to show up, enjoy the hell out of this one, and send studio execs the message that an R rated summer blockbuster really can work.  …Its either that or we fall into another bleak decade of watered down PG-13 films that not even Die Hard or The Terminator could overcome.

[5/7/12]  20th Century Fox appears to agree with the rest of the planet and will not alter the content of Prometheus based upon the MPAA rating bestowed upon them.  We are basing this assumption on the surfacing of what appears to be a legitimate, early ticket stub for the highly anticipated film:

That right there, my friends, is a big fat R rating!  The ticket was scanned by IMDB user “dvonnesoneek” and subsequently the internets were alerted by comicbookmovie.com.

If this is truly the real deal, words cannot describe how happy this makes me.  While I understand that excessive violence and language does not a good movie make, I have always felt that the Alien franchise (or universe, or second removed cousins, or however else Ridley Scott wants to tie Prometheus to previous films) is one that deserves a serious, unaltered, adult tone.

We have seen what happens when a studio insists on being too much involved (Alien 3) and we have seen what happens when you take this content into the ticket-selling friendly realm of PG-13 (AvP).  A rated R Prometheus can only mean that Scott is being given the freedom to realize whatever vision he had for this film.

It would have been very easy to slap a PG-13 rating on this and bank on the extra ticket sales (especially considering the rumored hefty budget).  I applaud 20th Century Fox for having the testicular fortitude to make this decision, and will now block out the week surrounding June 8 in order to recover from my head exploding in anticipation.