Alien: Romulus director wanted his movie to look like Ridley Scott’s original so bad that he used the same concept art and even did side by side takes

Director of the upcoming franchise installment Alien: Romulus, Fede Álvarez, reveals that right from the start he wanted his movie's cinematography to mimic Ridley Scott’s Alien despite being made decades later. 

"We have a scan of the original 35mm print of Alien and we put it on the screen side by side with ours," Álvarez tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on August 7 and features Alien: Romulus on the cover. "Obviously that would do nothing if we didn’t do our job on the day," he adds, noting that the team has to light the set in a certain way to reflect the color-grading of the first movie.

This is not just a style choice but is vital to making the audience believe this film sits within the Alien world, as although Alien: Romulus is the newest movie in the franchise, it is actually set between the events of Scott’s Alien released in 1979 and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens. The filmmaker continues: "Visually, half of the work is that: just making sure that it looks like you’re in that universe."

Even at the very birth of the project, Álvarez and production designer Naaman Marshall went to considerable lengths to ensure that the sets looked right. The director explains how the two would rifle through archives looking to take inspiration from conceptual artist Ron Cobb’s work. "We dug out a lot of concept art that was done for those movies that wasn’t even used," adds the Evil Dead helmer. "And figured out a way to be inspired by that and put it in this movie."

The result? We will just have to wait and see. But what has been revealed so far including the trailer and the first look at the Xenomorph does feel rather reminiscent of the original. 

Alien: Romulus stars Civil War’s Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, The Last of Us’ Isabela Merced, and Aftersun’s Spike Fearn as a group of young space colonizers who get more than they bargained for when they step foot on a derelict space station and come face to face with the universes most terrifying life forms.

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Alien: Romulus releases on August 16. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Alien: Romulus on the cover and is available from Wednesday, August 7. 

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