Noah Hawley's Alien TV Series Won't Just Repeat The Franchise's Xenomorph Cycle
"Alien" is one of the greatest horror movies of all time. It's also one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. Director Ridley Scott provided an incredible formula that ignited an entire franchise. When James Cameron jumped on board with "Aliens," he injected the sequel with his action sensibilities and took the film series to the next level. "Alien 3" was lambasted, mostly for killing Newt and Hicks off-screen, but it's not David Fincher's fault the studio pushed him around, and the workprint cut of the movie is much better. "Alien Resurrection" is just awful. Flash forward, and "Prometheus" disappointed some longtime fans but has some passionate defenders, and "Alien: Covenant" tried to meet somewhere in the middle, but didn't quite stick the landing.
However, all of the "Alien" movies, in some capacity, feature the familiar formula that was established in "Alien." Our main characters end up trapped somewhere, the xenomorphs are discovered, first the Facehuggers, then the full-bodied monsters, lots of death, rinse and repeat. But how will that translate into Noah Hawley's upcoming "Alien" TV series that's coming to FX sometime down the road? The creator behind FX's "Fargo" series and the trippy Marvel TV show "Legion" recently appeared on a panel at the Austin Film Festival, attended by our own Ryan Scott, and discussed his small-screen approach to the franchise, which will include some remixing of what fans expect from an "Alien" project.
'The thing with Alien is, it's always trapped in a spaceship, trapped in a prison. What if it wasn't that?'
Hawley broke down the challenge of bringing what made "Alien" great into the television arena, and it required some adjusting. He explained:
"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 recalled some early conversations during development of the series that helped shape what the "Alien" show would become. The filmmaker said, "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?'"
Instead, Hawley will be bringing the xenomorphs to Earth, and it will explore that moment in Earth's history. As he explained, "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."
That will include a bit of exploration into AI, which has also always been prominent in "Alien" movies, thanks to the presence of extremely advanced androids like Ash (Ian Holm), who actually gave the original "Alien" one of its most surprising twists. Hawley confirmed that reveal was a key moment that inspired his "Alien" series.
But since this is an "Alien" series, what about the xenomorphs themselves? What can we expect from their presence? Apparently, that will be refreshed a bit too.
'So I found a way to kind of innovate around that structure and play with it'
During the panel, Hawley recalled that familiar formula that always ends up in "Alien" movies at some point:
"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."
Without any specifics, it's impossible to know if this updated approach will work. "Alien" has never been tested in television before, and it hasn't been flawless in feature film form either. This is a very tough nut to crack. But if Hawley figured out how to turn "Fargo" into a compelling anthology series that has now run for multiple seasons and delivered a psychologically twisted comic book series that felt unlike anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then maybe he can give an "Alien" TV series the DNA it needs to keep our attention.
There's no premiere date for the "Alien" TV series yet, but production began in July of 2023, and it was allowed to continue amidst the Hollywood strikes because the cast was working under the British Equity contract guidelines overseas. So we'll likely see it sometime in 2024. Stay tuned.