{"id":80836,"date":"2025-07-21T14:37:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/80836\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T14:37:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:37:19","slug":"earth-is-respectfully-reimagining-the-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/80836\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth’ Is Respectfully Reimagining the Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley knows<\/a> the tables are stacked against him. He knows the Alien franchise is a tough one to crack<\/a> and that the idea of bringing it to televsion might elicit groans from certain fans. But Hawley is also really good at his job. He somehow turned Fargo into a TV show worthy of the incredible film. He made Legion one of the best comic book shows in recent memory. And he knows he\u2019ll never be able to remake or recapture the terror you felt watching the Ridley Scott original<\/a>, or the exhilaration created by James Cameron\u2019s sequel<\/a>. Instead, he\u2019s figured out a way to draw inspiration from those things, but also make it his own. The hope is that it\u2019ll create something that\u2019s 100% recognizable as Alien, but will also stand on its own as a way to totally flip the franchise on its head.<\/p>\n

Starting August 12, Alien: Earth tells a story set three years before<\/a> the events of the first movie. However, while that was in space, this takes place\u2014you guessed it\u2014on Earth. There, a spaceship that was tasked with acquiring deadly aliens from across the galaxy<\/a> is finally on its way home, when something goes wrong and it crashes. To explore the crash, a team of hybrids\u2014synthetic beings with the consciousness of children\u2014are sent in to explore. What they\u2019ll find is not just the iconic xenomorph, but several other species as well.<\/a><\/p>\n

A few weeks back, io9 was among a group of journalists who were able to watch the pilot episode of Alien: Earth (which was awesome) and speak with Hawley, as well as producer David Zucker, about all things Alien: Earth. Here are the highlights.<\/p>\n

Alien: Earth won\u2019t play the hits <\/p>\n

Alien: Earth couldn\u2019t exist without the xenomorph, but Hawley knew he had to add new creatures to hopefully capture what makes Alien so special. \u201cOne of the things you can never reproduce in an audience that has seen an Alien movie is the feeling you had the first time you saw the life cycle of this creature in that first film,\u201d Hawley said. \u201cIt\u2019s just unreproducible. You know that it\u2019s an egg, it\u2019s a face hugger, it\u2019s a chestburster, and all that. And so that\u2019s where the idea for other creatures came from. I want you to have that feeling because that feeling is integral to the Alien experience. But I can\u2019t do it with those creatures. So let\u2019s introduce new creatures where you don\u2019t know how they reproduce or what they eat. So that you can have that,\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m out\u2019 feeling multiple times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AlienSamuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier. Image: FX The humans are scarier than the aliens <\/p>\n

Another intergral part of the Alien franchise is that, yes, the aliens are brutal killers. But the humans who are trying to capture them are often worse. That\u2019s why Alien: Earth will feature an equally important story centered on a technological race, personified by those hybrid characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the interesting features of the movies, especially Jim Cameron\u2019s movie where he has that line from Sigourney [Weaver] to Paul Reiser where she says, \u2018I don\u2019t know which species is worse. At least they don\u2019t fuck each other over for a percentage.\u2019 Right? And so this idea about humanity and the terrible things that we do to each other, it really opened my mind as to the types of horror that would populate the show, not just body horror or creature horror, but also the moral horror of what people do. And the question is, if you take a girl and you put her into this synthetic body, is she going to choose human or other? And so it becomes about the push-pull between \u2018Well, why be human if this is what humans do to each other?\u2019 But there\u2019s such a beauty to the human experience, etc. So that\u2019s the tension, I feel like, that elevates it above just who lives and who dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about the feel\u2026 <\/p>\n

Hawley\u2019s story is set in the world of Alien, with names and companies you\u2019ll recognize, but that wasn\u2019t the most important thing to him. \u201cI\u2019ve said before but, if I have a skill at reinventing classic movies, it\u2019s understanding what the original made me feel and why, and then recreating those feelings in you by telling you a new story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2026but also the look. <\/p>\n

That new story had to fit visually in the world of Alien. \u201cI was very adamant that technology-wise we embrace the retrofuturism of the franchise,\u201d Hawley said. \u201cThat is the visual definition for me. There are three classic sci-fi brands. There\u2019s Star Wars, Star Trek, and Alien. And none of them look like the other one. You would never confuse one for the other. And so if we want to make Alien, something\u2019s got to be dripping. Something\u2019s got to be rusty. You have to have those sorts of aesthetics to it. And then the challenge was, well, we\u2019re not even focused on the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and we\u2019re on Earth. And so how, from an aesthetic standpoint, do you make sure that it feels like Alien to the audience when, obviously, if we\u2019re not on a ship, it\u2019s just not going to look like that. So that was a long, long process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AlienAlien on earth in Alien: Earth. Image: FX The aliens will be seen on earth <\/p>\n

Yes, there are other creatures. No, it won\u2019t be focused on the life cycle of the xenomorph. But the xenos are in there, crucial to the show, and in a way you\u2019ve never seen them before. \u201cWe never really see these creatures within an ecosystem, right?\u201d Hawley said. \u201cThey\u2019re always sort of an apex predator existing in a space with no other wildlife, really. And I was interested in that idea of, if you\u2019re going to bring these creatures to a terrestrial environment, how are they going to change it? And how are other creatures, bugs, any of it, going to interact with them? So some of that we address, some of that is still percolating for future stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think just the idea of seeing these creatures in a landscape, an Earth landscape, is such a profoundly unsettling and kind of exhilarating thing when we get to that moment,\u201d he added. \u201cIt really felt like such a gift after, at that time, six movies, to be doing something new, right? To have that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

New creatures will be Alien-worthy too <\/p>\n

Hawley knows that it will be hard, if not impossible, to top the H.R. Giger design of the original Alien. But he also knows he has to make sure these new creatures can stand up against them. So lots of care has, and continues to be, taken in their designs. \u201cI will be adjusting the design until they tell me I absolutely can\u2019t do it anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery element of it, from the skin texture to sound design, it all goes to the \u2018Get into your nightmares\u2019 part of it. And mostly my hope is that people who watch the show will never do anything comfortably again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AlienImage: FX Alien: Earth is adding significantly to the Alien mythology <\/p>\n

So, yes, this is a new story with new threads and perspectives, but it fits in with the original movies in some fun ways. That\u2019s especially driven by the fact this show isn\u2019t on a spaceship or an alien planet. It\u2019s on Earth, which is something the original films have almost wholly avoided. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time we\u2019re coming to Earth,\u201d Hawley said. \u201cI mean, there\u2019s a little on Earth in Prometheus, but with no sort of expansion on who rules the Earth, what are the politics, how does that work throughout the galaxy, etc. And so it was a gift to get a franchise this big with very little mythology to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that I could say, \u2018All right, well, what do we know about the next hundred years?\u201d Hawley continued. \u201cIt\u2019s going to get hotter. It\u2019s going to get wetter. I\u2019m not betting against capitalism so I think the corporations, that power is going to aggregate. And all we really know about Aliens is that there\u2019s this corporation called Weyland-Yutani. And for me, I just think that story, that Weyland-Yutani story, is really interesting, but I like the idea also of introducing that there\u2019s still a competition. And I also thought, in terms of the moment on Earth. I thought about the moment at the turn of the 20th century where you had Edison and Tesla and Westinghouse, and you weren\u2019t sure who was going to control electricity. So I thought if we had that kind of moment in which it\u2019s a contest between the sort of cybernetic enhancements and AI and transhumanism\u2014and, like any technology race, you know, you don\u2019t remember who the competitor to Xerox was, right? And so that was exciting to me to explore that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timeline of the movies is important <\/p>\n

In addition to the opportunity of exploring what\u2019s happening on Earth, Hawley loved that the movies gave him a lot of open space to add to the story. \u201cIf you remember the movie, they just get sent to this planet,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, clearly somebody knows about these creatures, right? They knew enough to send them there, but their knowledge of these creatures [is a mystery]. Now, of course, [the crew of the Nostromo] has been in cryosleep for, I don\u2019t know how many decades or years or whatever. So that\u2019s the interesting thing about the lack of mythology is these people who find those first eggs have been out of contact with Earth for who knows how long. And so there is a gray area that we could play in and try to create something with as big a scale as possible to justify the title while still making it credible for the rest of the canon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will this link with the new Alien or Predator movies? <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had some conversations with [the filmmakers],\u201d Hawley admitted. \u201c[But], you know, this is not a Kevin Feige Marvel Universe moment. I\u2019m not saying that that in success that that we shouldn\u2019t be coordinating or thinking big picture about that. The show [just] has to be a hit before you can really have those conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AlienBabou Ceesay as Morrow in a familiar place for Alien fans. Image: FX Crossovers from past movies are also possible <\/p>\n

Hawley doesn\u2019t know how far the show will go along but, he has thought about potential links between the show and films. \u201cI haven\u2019t literally calendared it out,\u201d he said, \u201cBut we know that Ripley ends up in an escape pod and is found 57 years later. So we really have no idea what they know on Earth about what happened on the Nostromo. And so is my challenge really figuring what happens in those three years or in the 60 years before she comes back? So those are all active questions that were that we\u2019re discussing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Alien: Earth a limited series? <\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s not up to me,\u201d Hawley said. But, in his mind it\u2019s a recurring series that could go on for more seasons. \u201cWe created it as a recurring series, and I have great plans and ambitions for it as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why was now the right time for Alien: Earth? <\/p>\n

For this one, we\u2019ll turn it over to David Zucker, the chief creative officer for Scott Free, Ridley Scott\u2019s production company. \u201cIn all candor, we were approached many times [about making Alien shows] and there was no interest on our behalf,\u201d Zucker said. \u201cAnd frankly, I don\u2019t think one could even conceive of delivering something of this kind of equivalency of what one can do [as] feature TV in this sort of modern era. But I think the thing that that also didn\u2019t exist before John [Landgraf, chairman of FX] and Noah had this conversation is somebody who could have this kind of vision, this kind of originality. Ridley was really, I think, enthralled by being able to relaunch the franchise. And he\u2019s excited about the extension of it, but it really required somebody who could take the essence, as Noah\u2019s talked about, and find a way to take viewers in an entirely different experience. And that that was just something we had never encountered before and couldn\u2019t have have imagined that that opportunity would exist. So the planets align, as they say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The planets will further align on August 12 when Alien: Earth debuts on FX. Check back for more soon.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley knows the tables are stacked against him. He knows the Alien franchise is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":80837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[55461,171,12560,53,55462,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-80836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alien-earth","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fx","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-noah-hawley","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114891734623894050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}