Years ago after the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company was completed, rumors popped up that the Alien film franchise was expanding to television. A few months later it was confirmed that Legion and Fargo creator Noah Hawley was one of the people that had pitched a series set in the universe of the films but was denied his opportunity to explore it, much like his recent attempt at rebooting the Star Trek films. In a new interview, Hawley opened up about what his take on the material was going to be, and how he would have developed the show to have no aliens before dropping them back in.
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“Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark Trek. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst,” Hawley told Observer. “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 chestburster, 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!’”
Despite Ridley Scott teasing earlier this month to Forbes that a new Alien movie is currently in the works, no official word has been said about it at the studio level or even in the trades.
Stay tuned for any details on the future of the Alien series as we learn them!
