FX announced in December 2020 that Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo) would be directing the first television series based on the classic horror film series Alien. In a recent interview with Esquire, Hawley gave an update on the status of the show, and just how big he plans it to be.
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“It’s going great,” Hawley said when asked about how the development of the series is going. “It’s going slowly, unfortunately, given the scale of it. I’ve made a certain business out of reinvention. Alien is a fascinating story because it’s not just a monster movie; it’s about how we’re trapped between the primordial past and the artificial intelligence of our future, where both [are] trying to kill us. It’s set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla. Someone’s going to monopolize electricity. We just don’t know which one it is.”
Hawley’s series will be the first-ever Alien story set on Earth, and judging by his comments, will explore the more grounded aspects of the franchise. The director also touched on the inclusion of Weyland-Yutani — the massive corporation that’s found in nearly every Alien property — and how he plans to deliver both a series that captures the horror-action aspect of the Alien franchise and a series that explores other themes established in the world.
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“In the movies, we have this Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which is clearly also developing artificial intelligence—but what if there are other companies trying to look at immortality in a different way, with cyborg enhancements or transhuman downloads?” Hawley said. “Which of those technologies is going to win? It’s ultimately a classic science fiction question: does humanity deserve to survive? As Sigourney Weaver said in that second movie, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t f— each other over for a percentage.’ Even if the show was 60% of the best horror action on the planet, there’s still 40% where we have to ask, ‘What are we talking about it, beneath it all?’ Thematically, it has to be interesting. It’s humbling to get to play with the iconography of this world.”
