‘Alien’ TV Series Creator Talks Plot of Upcoming FX Show
““What happens if you can’t contain it?”
The acid-blooded aliens of the Alien film franchise have always been like a horrible swarm of giant, parasitic insects, but most of the movies — the watchable ones, anyway, sorry, Alien vs. Predator — have presented isolated situations in which the final Boss battles come down to one alien creature vs. one desperate human with nothing to lose.
Noah Hawley, who will helm a new TV series based in the Alien / Aliens fictional universe for FXX, wants to change up that dynamic in a dramatic way, according to a report in Vanity Fair.
Hawley sat down for a discussion of season 4 of the same network’s Fargo (he’s the showrunner) but the conversation pivoted to his Alien series. Asked, “What’s next for you?” Hawley said in part:
What’s next for me, it looks like, is [an] Alien series for FX, taking on that franchise and those amazing films by Ridley Scott and James Cameron and David Fincher. Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies.
They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting…
Don’t expect to see Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley show up in Hawley’s series, however. “It’s not a Ripley story,” Hawley told Vanity Fair, “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.”
Hawley said his Alien series will be “set on Earth also.” He noted that in previous alien stories everyone was “always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a spaceship.”
“I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit,” Hawley continued, “so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”
It’s worth noting that setting up a new tale in which the Xenomorphs are running rampant and free is a great way to find enough fodder for ten episodes of cable drama.
Noah Hawley also told VF that he has written “the first two scripts,” so it sounds like the show is a done deal. He expects to begin production in spring 2022.
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