- Alien: Earth's creative team have given their take on why it's taken so long for an Alien TV series to be made
- They always envisioned it as a show rather than a movie
- Every other live-action Alien project has been made for the big screen
Alien: Earth's creative team has opened up on the decision to tell its story on the small screen.
Until now, every single project set in the Alien universe has been a movie. Indeed, from the 1979 Sigourney Weaver-starring original to 2024's pseudo-sequel Alien: Romulus, the sci-fi horror franchise's various tales have been told in film format.
That's changed with FX TV Original in Alien: Earth, which will air on Hulu (US) and Disney+ (internationally). Created by frequent FX collaborator Noah Hawley, who also developed Fargo and Legion for the US TV network, Earth breaks the near-50-year cycle of Alien stories being released exclusively in theaters.
Bringing the Xenomorph-led property to the small screen wouldn't have been possible until a few years ago. Many of the world's best streaming services, including Disney+, didn't exist. Furthermore, production budgets for TV shows had lagged behind their silver screen counterparts for decades. However, a sea change largely brought about by the rise of the streaming industry has reshaped the landscape and led to the purse strings being loosened by TV executives, thereby allowing creators to make shows with budgets similar to those of their movie siblings.
It's the end to such financial restrictions that enabled Hawley, producer David W. Zucker, and the rest of Alien: Earth's cast and crew to craft an eight-part series with a scope to rival any of the franchise's previous projects. However, speaking to me ahead of the show's release, Hawley and Zucker revealed there are other reasons why an Alien TV show hasn't been attempted before – and what made them settle on telling Earth's story via the television medium.
"A two-hour Alien movie is a survival story, right?" Hawley said. "Other than how expensive it would be, the obstacle of bringing the franchise to television is 'well, what other story could we tell?'.
"It [an Alien film] is about monsters and people running for their lives," Hawley continued. "That's not a TV show with any staying power. Part of the reason why it [Alien: Earth] worked is because I use the IP [intellectual property] as a starting point to explore my own themes and issues, and build a story within the Alien world. The are challenges with the scale of this show, balancing the drama, horror, and action, etcetera, but I think we accomplished all of that."
"The truth is, corporately, the franchise has been owned by the film division [20th Century Studios]," Zucker added. "It only became possible when we were given access to it [the Alien franchise] and then tried to find a place, such as FX, that would support this kind of vision. Fortunately, the long relationship they have with Noah, that's become a dream pairing for us and is the only conceivable way this could've worked."
Alien: Earth launches with a two-episode premiere on August 12 (North and South America) and August 13 (everywhere else). Read my dedicated guide to Alien: Earth, as well as my Alien: Earth review, before it arrives.
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