If there’s one thing you can count on in the Alien extended universe, it’s this everlasting truth: the Xenomorph always comes back. You can blast it out of an airlock or light it up with a flamethrower, but try as you might, you can’t keep a good alien down. So if you thought 2017’s Alien: Covenant was the last we’d see of this pesky extraterrestrial, we have some good, if inevitable, news. Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley is developing an Alien television series for FX, meaning that the Xenomorph will be back to inspire fright and disgust once again—this time in weekly installments.
The show is still in the early stages of development, but after months with no news, there's finally some hope on the horizon. FX chief John Landgraf said during the Television Critics Association press tour, "Noah is currently in production on the fifth season of Fargo, but he’s in active preproduction on Alien; he’s written scripts. I think he’s meeting with his production designer in Austin this weekend, gearing up for production this year after he completes the fifth season of Fargo."
In an interview with Esquire, Hawley teases an interpretation that blends the franchise’s classic creature feature structure with a modern parable about corporate greed. And now, new details are emerging about how the series will square up with canon. Read on for the full rundown of what to expect.
What Will the Alien Series Be About?
Hawley’s Alien will blast out of the airlock with one huge departure from what fans of the franchise know and love: the story will be set on Earth. “The Alien stories are always trapped,” Hawley told Vanity Fair. “Trapped in a prison, trapped in a spaceship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”
With an Earth setting comes Earth problems—namely, income inequality. Discussing his inspiration for where to take the franchise, Hawley points to the series’ long engagement with working class characters, from interstellar merchants to Marines on assignment. “On some level it’s also a story about inequality,” Hawley said in that same conversation. “You know, one of the things that I love about the first movie is how ’70s a movie it is, and how it’s really this blue collar space-trucker world in which Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are basically Waiting for Godot. They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation. The second movie is such an ’80s movie, but it’s still about grunts.”
In later installments of the Alien franchise, that “faceless nameless corporation” was sketched in as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a big bad mega-corporate profiteer whose activities include deep space transport, planetary colonization, and terraforming (to say nothing of their shady business studying Xenomorphs). Landgraf confirms that the series will focus on a new corporate baddie, telling IndieWire, "Weyland-Yutani has been an important component of the movies. There are references to that corporation in this show. But it actually takes place in the territory of a different corporation that Noah invented.” But don't expect any familiar framing here; Hawley plans to widen the lens from the franchise’s usual “grunts,” with an added emphasis on the corporate raiders dispatching them into deep space.
“In [my show], you’re also going to see the people who are sending them,” Hawley said. “So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us?"
In an exclusive interview with Esquire, Hawley discussed the sea of competition his big baddies will face in the new series:
It’s set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla. Someone’s going to monopolize electricity. We just don't know which one it is. In the movies, we have this Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which is clearly also developing artificial intelligence—but what if there are other companies trying to look at immortality in a different way, with cyborg enhancements or transhuman downloads? Which of those technologies is going to win? It’s ultimately a classic science fiction question: does humanity deserve to survive? As Sigourney Weaver said in that second movie, 'I don't know which species is worse. At least they don't fuck each other over for a percentage.'
Speaking of Sigourney Weaver: don’t expect to see Ellen Ripley here. Hawley is quick to point out that he’s not planning to send the franchise’s greatest character through the Xenomorph ringer again. (Somewhere, Ripley is breathing a sigh of relief.) “It’s not a Ripley story,” Hawley said. “She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it.”
FX chief John Landgraf confirms that it's not just Ripley getting a well-deserved vacation—it's her entire crew. He offered these key details about the series' set and setting:
Alien takes place before 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. All I can tell you is Ripley won’t be a part of it, and neither will any other characters, other than the alien itself. Noah has an incredible ability to both find a way of being faithful and showing fidelity to an original creation, like to the Coen brothers [with Fargo] or to Ridley Scott’s movie and James Cameron’s follow-up Aliens, but also to bring something new that represents both an extension and reinvention of a franchise at the same time. He’s done a masterful job with Alien as he did with Fargo. There are some big surprises in store for the audience.
Longtime Alien fans may be nervous about the series mixing up parts of the familiar formula (and they may be scarred from divisive prequels like Prometheus and Covenant), but Landgraf encourages viewers to be patient. “I hope they will feel like it’s faithful to the franchise they love but also a brave and original reinvention of that franchise,” he said. He also promised that the series will return not just to the roots of Alien, but its sequel, Aliens. “I remember watching both of them in the theater and how shockingly original and surprising each of them was in its own way,” Landgraf said. “And so, similar to his approach to Fargo, Noah decided to not take Ripley or any character from Alien–except perhaps the xenomorph itself–but go back and figure out what made the franchise so great and so durable in the first place, and see if he could find an experience that felt like walking into a theater and seeing one of those first two movies, where you get caught off guard.”
Who Is Attached to the Alien Series?
Casting news has yet to be announced. Hawley, however, is attached as show-runner, which bodes well for the future of the series. The series will also keep it in the family with Alien creator Ridley Scott signed on as a producer.
When Will the Alien Series Come Out?
It’s too soon to say when we can expect to see the Xenomorph lunge onto our screens. But the wheels of progress are turning, with filming set to begin sometime this year.
Watch this space for updates as we continue to learn more.
