When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, the House of Mouse netted more than just the X-Men and Fantastic Four. The Alien and Predator franchises are now both under their purview, with the latter already rebooted as the critically acclaimed Prey on Hulu.
As for Alien, we're getting a new movie - Alien: Romulus - from Fede Alvarez and a TV series which is being spearheaded by Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley.
Set seventy years before the events of Sir Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, Alien, the action will be set primarily on Earth. However, the Xenomorphs will appear, putting a different spin on what we're used to seeing from the classic property.
Hawley recently spoke with The Wrap and shared an update on where things stand with the series. While this timescale could change following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, it sounds like the wait for small screen Xenomorphs will be longer than many fans would like.
"We’re all just waiting for the strike, and it will end. The plan right now is to go back in January and be shooting in February, and looks like shoot until July or so, which puts the air date somewhere in the in the first half of '25," Hawley explains. "I was able to complete filming most of the first hour."
"That said, I wasn’t able to film anything with my star. So I still have the bulk of the show to film, and we have seven more hours to shoot. I certainly would have loved to get the show in front of people as quickly as possible."
The Alien TV series has faced more than its fair share of challenges, with the pandemic also responsible for slowing down production. However, one of the main reasons the strike has been problematic is because the show's lead, Sydney Chandler, is American and a member and a member of SAG-AFTRA. Scenes with the international members of the cast could be shot, but after that, work needed to be halted.
Alien also stars Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, and Kit Young.
"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," Hawley previously said of approaching Alien in a way to make it better fit an episodic format. "Even if you have 60% of the best action-horror on television, you still have 40% of 'What are we talking about?'"
"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?'"
"What is this moment on Earth, technology-wise? And where are we?" he added. "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."
Are you excited for Alien to hit FX in 2025?