Fargo Showrunner Noah Hawley Explains Why His Alien TV Series Isn't Happening

A couple of years ago, rumors of the expansion of the Alien film franchise popped up with one hot topic of those rumors being that television series was in the works with Legion and Fargo creator Noah Hawley as one of the people who had pitched a series that would have been set in the universe created by the film franchise. However, nothing really ever came of it and now Hawley is explaining why, and it turns out the conversation about the series just never got very far.

"A few years ago, FX asked me if that was a thing, would that be a thing for me. And, you know, we had a conversation about that, but it didn't go very far," Hawley told Collider. "And obviously, it doesn't seem to be a thing, Alien for TV, but you know, it's such a great story, certainly those original two movies are so iconic. But yeah, I don't know, it's not on my brain right now."

While it sounds like there was never any real forward motion on things, Hawley did share last month what his take on the material would have been and how he would have developed the show to have no aliens before dropping them back in.

"Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark Trek. It's sort of about humanity at its worst,' Hawley told Observer last month. "There's this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, 'I don't know which species is worse. At least they don't screw each other over for a percentage.' If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it's usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chest burster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it."

He continued, "I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you're going to make something for television, you've got 10 hours let's say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you're still going to have eight hours left. So, what is the show about? That's what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let's take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it's still a great show. What's the show about? Let's take the Alien out of the show. What's the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, 'This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there's aliens!'"

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