Alien: Earth Fills Out Its Cast (but Who Will Survive?)

Alien: Earth announced 11 new cast members on Tuesday, hot on the heels of the show’s first-ever preview on Sunday night. The new cast members are Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge, Enzo Cilenti, Max Rinehart, Amir Boutrous, Victoria Masoma, Tom Moya, Andy Yu, Michael Smiley, Jamie Bisping, and Tanapol Chuksrida. None of their roles have been announced yet, but as their story is a prequel to the original 1979 Alien, we’re not likely to know who they are anyway. FX is advertising Alien: Earth hard now for release this summer on Hulu. We still don’t know when exactly the show will be available to stream.

Alien: Earth is set two years before the original Alien, and for the first time ever, it brings the monstrous xenomorph to our home planet. The official logline reads: “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”

Chandler’s character, Wendy, is reportedly “a young woman who has the body of an adult and consciousness of a child.” Timothy Olyphant plays Kirsh, a synthetic who serves as Wendy’s “mentor and trainer.” The cast also includes Alex Lawther as a soldier named CJ, Samuel Blenkin as a CEO named Boy Kavalier, Essie Davis as Dame Silvia, Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, and Kit Young as Tootles. Several other cast members have been announced without their characters being specified, although Sandra Yi Sencindiver has a recurring role as “a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”

[RELATED: Everything We Know About Alien: Earth (And How It Connects to the Alien Movies)]

The first Alien: Earth footage released to the public played during an FX ad on Sunday night during the Oscars. It was only about six seconds long, but judging from social media commentary, it left quite an impression on viewers. Many weren’t aware of the show before, and their anticipation is split between excitement and wariness.

The Alien franchise has always kept its signature xenomorph far from earth, preserving the extreme threat that it would pose to all of human civilization if it could get there. Since we don’t see much of the planet in the series, we don’t know its condition for sure, but the movies seem to hint that humanity is alive and thriving down on earth. That means either the monster in this movie will be defeated and contained, or else the impression we got of earth in later movies was wrong.

Alien: Earth is slated for release sometime this summer on Hulu. An exact release date has not been set, but in the meantime, other Alien movies are streaming there now.