{"id":302841,"date":"2025-07-30T03:07:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302841\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T03:07:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:07:18","slug":"alien-tv-show-creator-teases-what-to-expect-from-alien-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302841\/","title":{"rendered":"Alien TV Show Creator Teases What to Expect from “Alien: Earth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The legendary Xenomorph crash lands on Earth and the small screen for the first time in FX\u2019s highly anticipated new Alien TV show \u201cAlien: Earth<\/strong>,\u201d from creator and showrunner Noah Hawley<\/strong> (\u201cFargo,\u201d \u201cLegion\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cAlien: Earth\u201c is set roughly 70 years in the future \u2013 yet two years before Ridley Scott\u2019s Alien \u2013 in 2120, when \u201cfive corporations \u2013 Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold \u2013 wield the power of nations, and proprietary advancements in technology provide the promise of a new tomorrow.\u201c\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Bloody Disgusting was invited to 26 Keys, Hawley\u2019s production banner, to preview the first fifteen minutes of the \u201cAlien: Earth\u201c premiere and pick the showrunner\u2019s brain on what to expect from the inaugural season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis show, for me, came out of a conversation that I had a few years ago now with John Landgraf<\/strong> about the Alien franchise,\u201c Hawley said ahead of the footage reveal. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those seminal movies for me from my youth. It\u2019s always an honor to be entrusted with the visions of other filmmakers as I was with Fargo, and I don\u2019t take it for granted at all that they\u2019re big shoes to fill. All I ever try to do is figure out what the original made me feel and why.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, that was the first two films. What did it make me feel and why, and then how can I create those feelings in an audience by telling you a <\/strong>totally<\/strong> different story? That\u2019s what\u2019s exciting about it.<\/strong> There are elements in the show that I think are going to provide those same feelings, but you won\u2019t know that I put that in there because this other moment in the movie made me feel a certain way. It\u2019s a more instinctual process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The showrunner is no stranger to reinterpreting seminal films for series format and knows what a daunting task it is to tackle such an iconic franchise. Hawley explains, \u201cThe biggest challenge on some level is how you take a horror movie, which, basically, is a monster movie. It\u2019s a survival film, and so it\u2019s a two-hour survival story at the end of which she survives and the monster\u2019s kicked out into space. How do you turn that into something that can last for many, many years?<\/strong> That\u2019s always character.<\/strong> It\u2019s always people that you can invest in emotionally and a larger structure to a story that pulls the audience through from year to year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

FX\u2019s Alien: Earth \u2013 Pictured: (l-r) Jonathan Ajayi as Smee, Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, Sydney Chandler as Wendy, Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Kit Young as Tootles, Erana James as Curly, Lily Newmark as Nibs. CR: FX<\/p>\n

Hawley continues, \u201cThe way that I thought about it originally is imagine that there have been six movies about the White Walkers, and they said make a television series out of that, and they made Game of Thrones. The monsters are <\/strong>definitely a critical part of it, but what are we talking about? What\u2019s the show about? In those first two Alien <\/strong>films, there are a lot of big ideas in there about humanity and artificial intelligence and the primordial past that we can\u2019t seem to escape, etcetera. That\u2019s what went into it for me<\/strong>. I brought my team over there, literally, from Fargo. We went from, I think, 30 below zero to 115 above in a plane ride, and they got to work. I love that about FX. There\u2019s no box I\u2019m in, and that\u2019s a testament to their faith and confidence in me.\u201c<\/p>\n

To further clarify, Hawley emphasizes that his comparison to White Walkers is conceptual. This won\u2019t be a straightforward survival horror series that puts the Xenomorph front and center. \u201cIf you go back and watch the pilot of Game of Thrones, it starts with the White Walkers. They exist, they linger through. You can argue whether taking seven seasons to get to that confrontation was too long. But no, it was just my way of saying, and I did this with Legion as well, which is to take the superpowers out of it. What is the show? Take the monsters out of it. What is the show? It has to be a great dramatic show. Then you go, \u2018And there are monsters.<\/strong>\u2018<\/strong> It becomes this bonus that you get. Versus just saying, okay, we\u2019re just going to do monster, action, and horror, and then what<\/strong>?\u201d<\/p>\n

That also means that Hawley is more interested in forging new ground than filling out connective tissue between the franchise\u2019s films, despite it being set two years before the ill-fated crew of the USCSS Nostromo encountered the Xenomorph. \u201cWe\u2019re telling a parallel story. I\u2019m not actively engaging with the films themselves <\/strong>in terms of<\/strong> who\u2019s on the other end of the phone or that idea. I\u2019m not looking to connect it to those movies, literally.<\/strong> I think it\u2019s more taking the elements of the original films and expanding them for my own purposes. It\u2019s remarkable how little mythology there is to a franchise that\u2019s six movies deep; all we really know about the way humanity is organized is that it\u2019s built around a corporation, the Weyland-Yutani corporation. I just expanded that to more of a corporate power struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first fifteen minutes of the series introduces one of the corporations caught in the power struggle: Prodigy. A tense opening credit sequence gives the Xenomorph the spotlight, but \u201cAlien: Earth\u201c quickly sets about introducing some of its key players. It starts by establishing the crew of the USCSS Maginot, previously teased in footage tied to the series\u2019 SXSW activation.<\/a> It\u2019s a ship not unlike the Nostromo, filled with blue collar workers. It\u2019s also filled with unique alien species beyond the Xenomorph, many of them carnivorous in nature, which raises intriguing questions right away.<\/p>\n

The most intriguing part, however, is the way the introductions to the Maginot crew establish tension surrounding its synthetic, one that seems to have developed an unhealthy obsession toward a human member of the crew. The dynamics and prejudices surrounding the Maginot\u2019s synthetic feel like the proper launch point for the series\u2019 core interest in exploring a new class of AI and synthetic: the hybrid.<\/p>\n

\"Timoth<\/p>\n

FX\u2019s Alien: Earth \u2014 Pictured: Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh. CR: Patrick Brown\/FX<\/p>\n

The other critical introduction in the series\u2019 opening scenes is that of Wendy (Sydney Chandler<\/strong>), or rather the sort of birth of Wendy. \u201cAlien: Earth\u201c sees a young, terminally ill girl at Prodigy headquarters wax philosophical with her favorite synthetic (Timothy Olyphant<\/strong>) about the nature of scorpions while on the precipice of a daring new journey that involves her transferring her life essence, her thoughts, and memories, into a synthetic body. The girl emerges with not just a new body, one more mature than her actual age, but a new name inspired by the fairy tale classic Peter Pan that\u2019s reflected in Prodigy\u2019s serene halls, Wendy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a new evolution for the franchise\u2019s synthetics and one that will loom large over the series. Considering Hawley\u2019s exploration of classism amidst an intense power struggle among corporations, will the hybrid\u2019s new presence create another class within the ranks of synthetics and AI?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think clearly it will,\u201c Hawley answers. \u201cWendy, when she\u2019s animated seconds after you stopped watching that clip, she becomes the hero of our story. Like <\/strong>Fargo, Alien, for me, is a female franchise. And it is very important<\/strong> to me that we explore that. This question of does humanity deserve to survive led me to a place where I thought, well, who\u2019s more human than a child? They don\u2019t know how to pretend they\u2019re not afraid. They\u2019re bad liars.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSo that idea of watching this child grow up basically having to face all the problems of the adult world and the choices that they make; I mean there\u2019s that moment in Aliens where Sigourney [Weaver] says to Paul Reiser, \u2018I don\u2019t know which species is worse. At least they don\u2019t fuck each other over for a percentage.\u2018 This idea that this kid is going to have to discover what human morality is, and the idea for me that the horror exists in many forms in the show. It\u2019s not just body horror<\/strong> or creature horror; it\u2019s also the moral horror of what people do to each other.<\/strong> If Wendy is a human being in a synthetic body, she has a choice to make; is she going to choose human or other? That becomes the drive of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

FX\u2019s Alien: Earth \u2014 Pictured: Sydney Chandler as Wendy. CR: FX<\/p>\n

While the beginning of the series works to set up its human and synthetic characters, Hawley hasn\u2019t forgotten its creatures. The series creator explained why he introduces new species, \u201cOne thing that I could never do with just the Xenomorph is to make you feel that level of shock and dread at like, wait, how does it reproduce? What does it eat? Instead of having this ship be simply something that had encountered Xenomorph life on a planet, it was sent out there to try to collect species from different planets like the <\/strong>HMS Beagle<\/a><\/strong> and Darwin, and that brought a few species into the story. Now, the audience has no idea how they reproduce and what they eat, and now we have the opportunity for the audience to feel the same feeling you felt in the original movie<\/strong>.\u201c<\/p>\n

The Xenomorph also received the same level of care and thought, with Hawley teasing some updates to the iconic movie monster, handled with practical effects as much as possible. \u201cObviously, there\u2019s a Xenomorph,\u201d he tells us, \u201cand there\u2019s a design challenge of saying, okay, well, let\u2019s look at the Xenomorph across time. I <\/strong>had the ability to<\/strong> tweak on my own, which was really exciting. I tried to be as reverential as I could about the silhouette and the creature itself and wanted to have a reason to make any changes that I made.<\/strong> Then, of course, the other creatures that they come through first, there\u2019s a concept, has to be a concept of it. Like what\u2019s its function? What does it do? How is it upsetting to an audience? That becomes a practical design challenge of working with concept artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked with W\u0113t\u0101,\u201d Hawley reveals<\/strong>. \u201cThe process of a Xenomorph is that you first have to cast a suit performer because the suit has to be molded to that body and all those things. Then you hope the guy\u2019s girlfriend doesn\u2019t break up with him, and he goes on an ice cream binge or whatever. So all that stuff. For me, it comes down to how long is the shot? If I\u2019ve got a guy in a suit with a tail on a fishing line, and the shot\u2019s like a 10th of a second, I think I can paint out the fishing line, and you\u2019re going to be happy with it. So I always erred on, let\u2019s try it practically first if we can because there\u2019s just no comparison in a way to the organic-ness of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The fact that the opening scenes take place both on Earth and in space, combined with a robust cast list, signals a very expansive series ahead. Hawley revealed that he took inspiration and advice from a talented filmmaker known for his awe-inducing sense of scale. \u201cI reached out to Denis Villeneuve <\/strong>when I was making this because I found as I went through the images that were going up on the mood board, the ones that weren\u2019t from Alien were Dune or Arrival, and a lot of that has to do with a sense of scale. He\u2019s so good at really feeling the bigness of things, creating, whether it\u2019s a long lens or a full-scale person. He\u2019s also so great at making something huge that feels so intimate at the same time. So, to the degree that he was willing to talk shop with me, we\u2019ve had a couple of conversations about it because I think that\u2019s what\u2019s important. Television is not a small screen anymore. We\u2019re making these things, as many people who\u2019ve only ever seen Alien on a small screen or Dune on a small screen, but you can still feel that sense of scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawley adds, \u201cThe show itself is a hybrid because, as I said, the <\/strong>Alien movies are survival stories. The show has to inherently not be the movies. What should it be? How do you make it compelling to the fans and the super fans that they feel like they\u2019re getting that core Alien<\/strong>-ness?<\/strong> And then also expand its attraction to a non sci-fi audience in a way by telling compelling dramatic stories about character.\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cAlien: Earth\u201c packs the first fifteen minutes with new characters, settings, and creatures. That\u2019s before the arrival of the Xenomorph. When asked which of this series\u2019 monsters \u2013 human or otherwise \u2013 terrifies Hawley the most, his answer emphasizes the horror ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting. You\u2019d have to know more about them to know. But you should just know that for all of them in this season, <\/strong>there\u2019s going to be a \u2018no\u2019 moment. There\u2019s going to be that, \u2018Nuh uh, I\u2019m out moment,\u2019<\/strong> in some aspect of their existence.<\/strong> It\u2019s strange to say that\u2019s the fun of it. But of course, if you\u2019re making Alien, the fun of it has to be if you feel like you have found something that will make someone feel a similar feeling of revulsion, and it\u2019s an exciting thing.\u201c<\/p>\n

Original series \u201cAlien: Earth\u201d premieres August 12<\/strong> on FX.<\/p>\n

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