The Alien Nation property is apparently still ripe enough to inspire a movie remake at 20th Century Fox, and Deadline reports that Jeff Nichols is in talks to direct it.
As for as sci-fi metaphors go, the 1988 film Alien Nation wasn’t the most subtle, but was effective. Starring James Caan and Homeland star Mandy Patinkin, the film followed a near-future scenario where a group of aliens crash land on Earth, and afterward assimilate into the US as immigrants. Caan plays a racist (xenophobic?) cop who is partnered with a newly-promoted alien cop to investigate a case that leads to an alien-based conspiracy that got Caan’s former partner killed.
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The film’s themes of racism and multiculturalism were strong enough to spawn a TV series that was canceled after one season (due to budgetary issues at Fox), but it has kept a cult-following ever since, through TV movies, comic book, and novel adaptations.
Nichols is no stranger to sci-fi tales with strong socio-political subtext; his most recent film, Midnight Special, took elements of sci-fi and comic book culture and mixed them into an intensely personal story of a father’s love (see it, if you haven’t). He also knows how to explore Americana culture and the the men living within it, with films like Mud and Take Shelter being excellent character studies.
The writer/director is about to show his latest film, Loving (about the Supreme Court case of interracial couple that made interracial marriage legal in the US), at the Toronto International Film Festival. If that isn’t a solid precursor to telling the story of Alien Nation, what is?
We can only hope that Nichols’ longtime collaborator Michael Shannon lands a role in this Alien Nation remake. But which lead role to cast him in…
