FX’s ‘Alien’ Series Wraps Filming, Showrunner Noah Hawley Promises “Something Special”
FX’s long-gestating Alien series has finished principal filming, creator Noah Hawley says.
“We are wrapped — just wrapped,” Hawley told The Hollywood Reporter Wednesday, the same day his other FX series, Fargo, earned 15 Emmy nominations. “I’m in post, editing away, and obviously there’s a large visual effects component that takes time. But I couldn’t be happier with the show we shot.
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“If people wanted a television series based on the world of Alien, I think I’m gonna give them something special.”
The series, whose full title will be Alien: Earth, was early into its production cycle in Thailand when the 2023 actors strike shut down the set (scripts had all been written before writers struck in May). Filming resumed after management agreed to new contracts with the two unions; the series is slated to premiere sometime next year.
When it does debut, it will be almost five years from FX chief John Landgraf’s announcement of the Alien project in December 2020. As the title suggests, series will be set on Earth and take place near the end of the 21st century, before the event’s of Ridley Scott’s 1979 space-horror classic (Scott is an executive producer of the series via his Scott Free company).
Hawley said in a January interview that the show will explore some of the same themes as that film, including the idea of humanity being “trapped between its primordial parasitic past and its AI future, and they’re both trying to kill us,” but its story won’t be tied to those of Scott’s two Alien prequel films, 2012’s Prometheus and 2017’s Alien: Covenant.
Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille and Adrian Edmondson.
Hawley has been on board from the start, and he told THR that “it’s crazy to think that it took three to five years to make the first season of Alien.”
“I think that I set myself a high bar dramatically, to turn what is one of the great horror and action franchises in cinema into something that takes more time with character and theme and does more than just create a horror story about trying to escape from death,” he said. “And I’m very happy with how it turned out and the performances that that the actors gave and the work of all artisans. I can’t wait for people to see it.”
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