After years of lying dormant, the Alien franchise roared back to life in a big way back in 2024, thanks in large part to the success of Alien: Romulus hitting the big screen. The spinoff — which took place between the events of Alien and Aliens — was a hit with both audiences and critics, opening the doors for a number of new big-screen opportunities in the frightening sci-fi world. One of the biggest criticisms among fans, though, is that Romulus may have played it too safe, borrowing too heavily from the most iconic components of the series — a complaint which won’t be lobbied against the upcoming FX series Alien: Earth, a project that has been in the works since 2020. Romulus wasn’t the only reason 2024 was a seminal year for the franchise, as that marked the year that production on Alien: Earth took place in Bangkok, Thailand, and ComicBook was on location to witness the ambitious new experience firsthand.
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Alien: Earth is the brainchild of Noah Hawley, who previously delivered audiences TV adaptations like Legion and Fargo. Unsurprisingly, his approach to Alien: Earth mirrors his approach to those other properties, as he attempted to distill the essence of each title and bring it to life in a fresh way, as opposed to merely touching on a limited roster of characters or constrained plot points.
“I always felt like, here are the characters you love and I’m just going to tell you new stories about them, and my hope was that everyone would be so happy to have new stories that they wouldn’t be as angry,” Hawley shared with press. “It’s a very different story with its own tone of voice. I have no desire to make it funny, let’s say, or make it weird for weirdness’s sake. Within that, I think what I’m always looking for is specificity in the character details and the design aesthetic, those kinds of details.”
He added, “When I do these adaptations, which I’ve been asked to do a couple of times now, I just try to figure out what the original made me feel and why, and then try to make you feel similar things while telling you a completely different story. When I look at that first movie, it’s not just a monster movie. It’s about humanity trapped between the primordial parasitic past and the AI future and they’re both trying to kill us.”
In the nearly 50-year history of Alien, fans of the series might think they’ve seen it all, especially given that Romulus marked the seventh big-screen entry in the saga (ninth if you count the two Alien vs. Predator films). Through its inherent concept alone, Alien: Earth is giving us two things fans have never gotten from the franchise: a long-form TV series and an adventure set on Earth.
FX officially describes the story, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”
The Doomed Journey of the Maginot
The Weyland-Yutani ship in question is known as the Maginot, and while the ship itself obviously isn’t the same vessel as the doomed Nostromo from the original Alien, it is essentially the same model of spacecraft. Due to this, production designer Andy Nicholson, along with fellow production designer Jason Knox-Johnston, went to great lengths to study the original Alien, frame by frame, in order to capture the correct details of the Nostromo to replicate it for the series. Their recreation is so authentic, in fact, that art director on the original Alien Roger Christian gets a special thanks in the credits of Alien: Earth, as it was his designs that were replicated.
One big difference between the Nostromo and the Maginot, though, is the purpose of their missions. Whereas the Nostromo served as a commercial hauler, the Maginot was retrofitted to act more like Charles Darwin’s Beagle, collecting otherworldly species from across the galaxy for purposes of research. With this being the Alien franchise, however, you can imagine how well this goes. Still, there persists a number of similarities between the two ships and it’s hard to shake the feeling that a xenomorph could pop out of the walls as you walk through the set of the Maginot and around its layout of iconic cryopods.
A New Era of Fear
For those who might not inherently remember the timeline of the events of the franchise, Earth takes place roughly two years before the events of the original Alien. In this sense, it could be argued that Earth is technically a prequel. When Ridley Scott returned to the franchise for prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, he leaned into other elements of the franchise that were just as ripe for exploration as frightening creatures, demonstrated with his depictions of artificial intelligence. Since this is an Alien project, after all, there will be both the iconic xenomorph and other beastly creatures attacking characters, though Hawley looks to be tackling some of the themes Scott leaned into with the prequels, including AI and the distinction of what really makes a human a human.
Any Alien fan will recognize the Weyland-Yutani name, but Prodigy is a new player in the series’ mythology. Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) serves as the brainchild of Prodigy, with the significance of the corporation in the series sure to spark questions about what happened to the company during the events of the original movie. Interestingly, Weyland-Yutani could be considered the old guard in this world, while Boy Kavalier and Prodigy are pushing more boundaries than the former. One of the ways in which the set designers demonstrated this was through the monitors used by the competing organizations; Weyland-Yutani uses CRT screens with 4:3 ratios, as seen in the original Alien, while Prodigy tech utilizes the 16:9 aspect ratio.
An Immersive Production
With Disney now owning the rights to the Alien franchise under their 20th Century Studios banner, the production could have utilized any number of methods to bring the series to life, such as The Volume, the groundbreaking tech used on The Mandalorian. However, Bangkok ended up becoming highly beneficial when it came to Hawley’s version of Earth in 2120. One component of that vision is the city’s blend of high-tech, lavish skyscrapers against its more urban environments, as the whole city itself is surrounded by thick jungle. It’s exactly this collision of lifestyles and geographic opportunities that is highlighted in Alien: Earth; the more opulent members of society live high above the common folk in lavish skyscrapers, as one’s worth to society can essentially be measured in how high above the ground they live. The production’s sets themselves can serve multiple purposes, as the modular nature of many of these environments means the art department can quickly swap out the set dressing and allow one nondescript room or hallway to be filmed from a different angle and with different props and look entirely unique.
Another added bonus of filming in Bangkok is the climate itself. The tragic and all-too-real trajectory of global warming is projected to reach oppressive levels by the timeline of the series. The tropical climate of Bangkok both replicates the heat of a cooked planet, as well as the intense humidity. The moisture is such a threat within the world of Alien: Earth that various laboratories are in a constant battle against mold, to the point that autonomous scrubbers scour the nooks and crannies of a facility to chip away at the growth, almost serving like futuristic Roombas.
Blending the Old With the New
Even though Hawley and his team pushed boundaries with fresh elements for the franchise, there will still be plenty of recognizable staples and pieces of iconography reminiscent of the original films. Costume designer Suttirat Larlarb and international wardrobe supervisor Srirattana Wattanavitkul borrowed ideas from many of the ensembles worn by the crew of the Nostromo for the crew of the Maginot, replicating the grounded nature of these characters and their histories, while the designs for members of Prodigy and specifically Boy Kavalier allowed for more invention. Lead armorer Benjamin Clarke aimed to replicate the firearms seen in the more action-heavy Aliens, and also consulted his personal copy of Lee Brimmicombe-Wood’s 1995 book Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual, which served as an in-world breakdown of the Colonial Marines’ artillery.
While visiting the set of Alien: Earth, two things were main abundantly clear: every single member of the series’ crew approached the project from a place of love for the franchise, as they went to great lengths to pay respects to the sci-fi series that struck fear and wonder into the hearts of audiences, and that the series looks to take what fans loved about the past and bring it into a new generation. Hawley and his team seem to have found the balance of honoring the past yet not being beholden to it, carrying with them the weight of the franchise’s legacy without being anchored by it.
Alien: Earth looks to be unlike anything else ever seen in the franchise while also being everything that fans come to expect when it ultimately premieres on FX on August 12th.
Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.
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