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News of a potential Alien miniseries from Noah Hawley, showrunner for Legion and Fargo, hit the internet in 2019 in a report from Deadline. Not much has been said about the spinoff since then – until now.
Speaking to Deadline following the conclusion of Fargo season 4, Hawley told the publication of the Alien TV show: “I know that there’s an effort to reshuffle a lot of things post-Disney takeover and it was a conversation that I had a couple years back. And I have not in the last few weeks been having those conversations about it. But I know that like any studio that there’s a great desire to make the most of one’s library so I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that.”
Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, which massively expanded the House of Mouse's entertainment library – and Disney's apparently open to new ideas.
Hawley added: “Ya know, I have conversations from time to time, but I’m not committed.” When asked if there was a "hard conceit," he responded: “No, I haven’t – nothing is at that stage.”
Though Hawley is vague about the series, what’s most interesting here is that discussion about the project is still ongoing – suggesting we might get the spinoff series eventually. The last time we saw the Alien franchise was with Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant in 2017, which received middling reviews and a lukewarm audience response.
Recently, Hawley told Observer that his approach to the series would be more human-focused. “Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark Trek. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst,” he commented. “There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney [Weaver] says, “I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.” If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it.”
He went on to say: “I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about."
He further explained: "As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, “This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s aliens!””
