Disney Puts Fox’s Alien Nation Reboot On Hold

Disney has cancelled or pushed back several 20th Century Fox projects since taking on those assets in their landmark deal with 21st Century Fox. The latest project to get sidelined is the Jeff Nichols directed Alien Nation reboot, which he joined back in 2016 (via Variety). Now, in this case the project is being put on hold by Disney and not outright cancelled, at least not yet, though we aren’t sure how the project fits in with Disney’s current slate, and other delayed projects have been pushed back so much we don’t know if they will ever see the light of the day (i.e. New Mutants).

For those unfamiliar, Alien Nation was a 1988 film that starred James Caan and Mandy Patinkin and was produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Richard Kobritz. The premise was that an enslaved alien race lands in the Mojave Desert, and there are quite a few of them. The Newcomers now live among humans, and police detective Matthew Sykes (Caan) ends up getting a Newcomer as a partner named Sam Francisco (Patinkin) after his partner dies. The two end up discovering a plot to use a drug concoction that helped enslave the aliens before to make them servants on Earth once more.

The movie wasn’t a huge hit at the time, but it made enough to spawn a television series, though that only ran for one season.

It remains to be seen if this film will eventually make it to production or if this is just an indefinite hold, but we’ll keep you updated.

Since the merger, Disney closed down the Fox 2000 brand, which featured movies like the Tom Hanks-led News of the World project and Angie Thomas’ On The Come Up. They also officially cancelled Channing Tatum’s long-delayed Gambit project as well as Wes Ball and Matt Reeves’ Mouse Guard adaptation, which was set to film in just a few weeks.

Fox’s Dark Phoenix was also the final film in that long-running X-Men franchise until Marvel Studios can introduce the X-Men characters in the MCU at some future time. At the moment it seems like it will be a while before we see them, as Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has hinted it could even be around 5 years or so. Hopefully, it is not quite that long, but Marvel already had plenty of plans in the pipeline before the deal went through, so it kind of makes sense.