The Alien prequel will ignore Covenant and Prometheus because "that’s just inherently less useful"

Noah Hawley says his Alien prequel series will ignore the backstory provided by Alien: Covenant and Prometheus.

"Ridley and I have talked about this – and many, many elements of the show." Hawley explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "For me, and for a lot of people, this 'perfect life form' – as it was described in the first film – is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that's just inherently less useful to me."

The series, which will air exclusively on FX, was announced back in 2020. It's set to be the first Alien installment to take place on Earth – and Ripley won't be involved. Hawley, known for showrunning Legion and Fargo, is working closely with Ridley Scott to develop the series. Covenant and Prometheus serve as prequels within the Alien franchise, but, as Hawley said, quickly explain away a lot of the mythos and origins created by Scott in the original 1979 film.

"And in terms of the mythology, what's scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies' future. There's something about that that doesn't really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that's the choice I've made — there's no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me."

Per THR, production on the series was shut down in August due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, but is due to resume filming soon. The cast includes Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Sydney Chandler, Adarsh Gourav, and David Rysdahl. The series is also not to be confused with Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus – which is set to take place between the first and second movie.

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Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for GamesRadar+ based in New York City. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent's Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.