Way back at the Disney Investor Day in 2020, a brand new series was announced by FX that is based on the classic 20th Century Studios franchise, “Alien”, which will be coming to Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ around the world.

The new series is set not too far into our future, and it’s the first Alien story set on Earth. It blends both the timeless horror of the first “Alien” film with the non-stop action of the second and will take place before Ripley.

FX’s “Alien” is being created by Noah Hawley and Ridley Scott. It stars Sydney Chandler (Pistol), Alex Lawther (Star Wars: Andor), Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror), Kit Young (Shadow And Bone), Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) and Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger). Production has been underway on the show in Thailand. However, due to the ongoing actor strike, filming has been impacted due to some of the actors being members of SAG-AFTRA, though some of the series was able to continue filming after the strike started in July, since there were many actors involved who are members of actor’s unions outside of the US.

Recently, the show’s creator, Noah Hawley, spoke on a panel at the Austin Film Festival, where he revealed some of the inspiration behind the new show and why it will be different to the films and will be utilising the format change to television.

“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. Even if you have 60% of the best action-horror on television, you still have 40% of ‘What are we talking about?'”

During the panel, Noah revealed how he had been talking about doing an “Alien” show for years with the executives at both 20th Century Fox and Disney, revealing that he had some different ideas about where to set the show:

“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?'”

And that’s why the show is going to be set on planet Earth, to mix things up and to explore an alternative way of telling the story:

“What is this moment on Earth, technology-wise? And where are we? 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.”

Over the course of many films, they’ve all followed a similar approach, with finding the eggs, followed by face-huggers and then the Aliens, but Noah also explained during the panel that this might not be how the show works:

“And then it always mimics the life cycle of the creature, right? Which is egg, slow, Facehugger, starts to get faster — you know what I mean? And of course, that’s great for a horror movie to build that way. So I found a way to kind of innovate around that structure and play with it.”

It’s going to be interesting to see if audiences respond to the new show being different from the previous movies, especially with the format change, as we’ve never seen “Alien” as a show, but Noah Hawley has had great success moving “Fargo” from the big screen to our TV screens. It’s also refreshing to hear how he knows it has to be different, and the format of making a show requires that changes be made, but hopefully, still keeping those classic “Alien” moments we all love.  Not every film has the ability to move into a successful show; we’ve seen many try, such as “Willow”, “Star Wars”, “Turner & Hooch”, and “The Santa Clauses”, some have worked, but some have not.  Hopefully, “Alien” will be one of them.

Previous “Alien” films are available to stream now on Disney+ in many countries, including the UK, Canada and Australia.

Are you excited about a new “Alien” series? Let us know on social media!

Source – Slashfilm

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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