FX's Alien: Earth is about to bring the dreaded xenomorphs down to our world for the first time in the space-faring franchise's history, and the show's creators reportedly have ambitions to make it the next big prestige TV sensation.
Per Variety, FX as a network and showrunner Noah Hawley are aiming for Alien: Earth to hit at the same level as mega-blockbuster genre shows Game of Thrones and The Last of Us. In other words, a sweeping drama that draws in fans with a web of interconnected characters and stories, centered on a core cast.
The network is also apparently prepared to invest heavily in Alien: Earth, which Variety reports may have even carried a price tag exceeding the budget of FX's other recent big epic show, the hit historical drama Shōgun, which has cost FX a cool $250 million.
That sounds about right for the first Alien TV show, which breaks new ground for the franchise both functionally and in terms of story. Focusing on Sydney Chandler's Wendy, a human child whose mind is transferred to a synthetic body, the series will bring the eponymous aliens to Earth, along with a whole host of new creatures.
The show's earthbound setting will dig deeply into one of the classic Alien franchise's core themes - bloodthirsty, ruthless corporate greed - by expanding on what Alien's future Earth is actually like, not just a far-flung colony or ill-fated spaceship.
"All I tried to do is think one or two steps ahead," Hawley says about the Earth of Alien: Earth. "Is it realistic to think that billionaires are going to be trillionaires? The planet is heating up, and the seas are going to rise - it's going to be a hot, wet planet that we live on."
Hawley also cites Alien as one of the "three main branches of science fiction," alongside Star Trek and Star Wars, but remarks on the lack of direct connective tissue between many of the stories told across seven films and two Alien Vs. Predator films, not to mention countless comics, games, and other media.
"There's surprisingly little mythology across seven movies," he explains. "It was great to not have to jerry-rig a mythology into what's existing, but to just start again."
FX Entertainment president Gina Balian echoes these statements, saying "Everything doesn't have to fit together the way you expect from Marvel," FX Entertainment president Gina Balian says. "Fans don't expect that in this universe. It doesn't have the same pressure."
That lines up with Hawley previously stating that the expansion of the Alien franchise won't be "a Kevin Feige Marvel Universe moment."
Speaking as an Alien mega-fan, that's music to my ears. Balian is correct - I actually don't need everything across every Alien-related piece of media to line up seamlessly. Alien has always been more of a setting than a narrative. Even across the four original films in the series, each one has a unique setting that puts a new spin on a Xenomorph outbreak.
In fact, I'm quite encouraged by Alien: Earth apparently ignoring some of the plot developments of prequel film Prometheus and its follow-up Alien: Covenant, which establish the Xenomorphs not as an ineffable force of mysterious destruction conjured up from the darkest recesses of the universe but as purposely engineered creations.
Those plot points have never sat right with me - they take away some of the franchise's mystery. But between Alien: Earth premiering on August 12, and November 7's Predator: Badlands bringing in some Alien connections, I'm more excited about what's next for the venerable sci-fi horror series than I have been in years.
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