Alien TV Series: Noah Hawley Reveals Key Franchise Moment That Inspired New Show

Noah Hawley talks more about his Alien series being set on Earth.

By Jamie Jirak

A new TV series set in the world of Alien is coming soon from Noah Hawley, who is best known for creating the television adaptations of Fargo and Legion. Hawley previously teased the show would be set on Earth in the future, and he recently appeared on a panel at the Austin Film Festival and spoke about the choice to set the series here in addition to a key franchise moment that helped inspire the show (via /SlashFlm). 

"Look, a two-hour movie, you can set it up and then it's just about, 'Are they going to survive?' But if you're making a series, 'Are they going to survive?', you can't sustain it. Even if you have 60% of the best action-horror on television, you still have 40% of 'What are we talking about?'" Hawley explained. "I had some conversations early on with Peter Rice, who used to run all of television at Fox and then the first couple of years at Disney, where it was like, 'The thing with Alien is, it's always trapped in a spaceship, trapped in a prison. What if it wasn't that?'"

He added of bringing xenomorphs to Earth, "What is this moment on Earth, technology-wise? And where are we? And the question science-fiction always tends to ask is, does humanity deserve to survive? So that seems like a really interesting question to continue to explore."

Hawley also spoke about the moment in the original Alien when Ash (Ian Holm) is revealed to be an android, which he used as inspiration. 

"And then it always mimics the life cycle of the creature, right? Which is egg, slow, Facehugger, starts to get faster – you know what I mean? And of course, that's great for a horror movie to build that way. So I found a way to kind of innovate around that structure and play with it," Hawley teased.

When Does the Alien Series Take Place?

Last year, FX CEO John Landgraf confirmed that the series takes place about 70 years from now, before Sigourney Weaver's Ripley.

"It's the first story in the Alien franchise that takes place on Earth. It takes place on our planet, near the end of this century we're currently in – 70-odd years from now," Landgraf said. "I hope they will feel like it's faithful to the franchise they love but also a brave and original reinvention of that franchise."

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"Setting it on Earth is really interesting," he continued. "We have to think forward about the future of the planet in terms of the environment, governance, technology and create and design a version of the planet in the future ... Noah wants to do that in a distinctive and original way."

Stay tuned for updates about the Alien TV series.

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