Alien: Earth Boss Talks Bringing The Sci-Fi Franchise To TV — and Down To Earth For The First Time
The most terrifying creatures in all of science fiction are coming to TV — and to our planet. (We'd say lock your doors, but we're pretty sure that won't help.)
The Alien film franchise, dating back to 1979's Alien, is getting a new chapter on FX this summer: Alien: Earth, an eight-episode series debuting Tuesday, Aug. 12 at 8/7c. And the series has a steady hand at the helm in showrunner Noah Hawley, who brought the Emmy-winning adaptation of Fargo to FX, along with acclaimed Marvel offshoot Legion.
The Alien franchise is beloved by sci-fi and horror fans for its bloodthirsty killer aliens known as xenomorphs, which have caused absolute carnage in six standalone films so far. But Alien: Earth is the first time the xenomorphs have made it to the small screen, and Hawley is acutely aware that making an Alien TV show presents a much different challenge.
"An Alien movie is a two-hour survival story, right? It's a monster movie," Hawley told reporters at a recent L.A. press screening. "And a television show can't be that. A television show has to be long-form with characters that you can invest in, with relationships and dynamics. I like to say that even if you had 60% of the best action and horror, you'd still have 40% of: 'What are we talking about? What is the show about?'"
So Hawley set about crafting a story set on Earth in the year 2120 ("three years before" the original Alien film, he says), with cyborgs and synthetics living alongside humans while a host of ruthless tech corporations — including the infamous Weyland-Yutani from the films — jockey for supremacy. "A horror movie often revolves around: Will your hero survive?" Hawley points out. "And if you have a story about monsters coming to earth, the question is: Will humanity survive? And then the next question is: Well, does humanity deserve to survive?"
Sydney Chandler (Sugar) stars as Wendy, a new prototype of "hybrid," or a robot infused with a human consciousness. And the concept of what it means to be human runs throughout Alien: Earth, Hawley hints: "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."
With the character of Wendy, "if you take a girl and you put her into this synthetic body, the question becomes: Is she going to choose human or other? And so it becomes about the push-pull between: Why be human, if this is what humans do to each other? But there's such a beauty to the human experience. So that's the tension that elevates it above just who lives and who dies."
Alien: Earth is also unique within the Alien franchise because it takes place on Earth — a first for the franchise, not counting the Alien vs. Predator crossover movies. "It's the first time we're coming to Earth," Hawley explains. "I mean, there's a little Earth in [the 2012 prequel] Prometheus, but with no sort of expansion on who rules the Earth. What are the politics? How does that work throughout the galaxy? So it was a gift to get a franchise this big with very little mythology to it."
What are you hoping to see from the first Alien TV show? Tell us in the comments!