The first two episodes of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth are now streaming on Hulu, and so far, critics and fans alike appear to be loving it. Despite already contradicting a popular fan theory, the series boasts a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and is expected to gain even more popularity as future episodes air. But as good as Alien: Earth is, you can only re-watch the two available episodes so many times without getting sick of them. If you’re looking for something else to watch with the same sci-fi movie-turned-TV show vibes, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

It’s only natural to finish Alien: Earth and still hunger for some Grade-A science fiction. But sci-fi is a broad genre, and jumping from the corporate-owned dystopia of Alien: Earth to the moneyless utopia of Star Trek: The Original Series wouldn’t feel right. You want to follow up Alien: Earth with something gritty, something grounded. Something that evokes nostalgia for an ’80s property while expanding on it and going in its own direction. In short, you want our picks for the three sci-fi shows you should watch after Alien: Earth.

1) Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles

One of the major plot points of Alien: Earth revolves around the universe’s three different kinds of artificial life—synths, cyborgs, and hybrids—duking it out to become the last android standing. So it only makes sense to go from that show to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a series that also revolves around artificial intelligence and mechanical life. Acting as an alternate follow-up to Terminator 2, The Sarah Connor Chronicles follows Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and her son John (Thomas Dekker) as they continue to try and stop the evil Skynet from becoming sentient and kicking off a future war between humans and machines.

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Far from the usual cheapo, TV cash grab, hoping to make money off of its big screen counterpart, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced a wealth of new lore to the Terminator universe and was generally well received by fans of the franchise. Along with the human resistance and Skynet, both introduced in the original Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles featured a new Cyborg Resistance started by machines that had switched sides and were now fighting against Skynet and a faction called The Grays, consisting of the opposite: humans that had jumped ship and were now working alongside the machines.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles isn’t currently available to stream, but episodes can be purchased from Prime Video and Apple+.

2) Alien Nation

One of the things fans love about the Alien franchise is the blue-collar, down-to-earth way it deals with the future. Many go as far as to refer to the Nostromo crew as “space truckers,” a stark contrast to the explorers and galactic wizards found in fellow sci-fi franchises, Star Trek and Star Wars. Alien Nation, an all but forgotten gem from 1989, presents its world in a similar fashion.

Based on a movie of the same name, Alien Nation takes place in a fictional version of 1991 where a UFO containing 300,000 aliens appears above L.A. After a three-year quarantine, the aliens, dubbed “Newcomers,” are integrated into human society where they face the same bigotry that plagues human minorities. Like the best sci-fi, Alien Nation used the fictional Newcomers to tackle real issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia while still finding time to find humor in the little quirks that differentiate the aliens from us, like their predilection for getting drunk off of spoiled milk.

Much like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Alien Nation isn’t available to stream anywhere. Fortunately, you can find the entire series on YouTube in reasonably good quality.

3) Andor

Normally, we’d consider Star Wars the furthest thing from Alien in terms of tone and aesthetic, but Andor isn’t your typical Star Wars. Andor takes a darker, more realistic approach to the Empire and its particular brand of space fascism. Andor, like Alien: Earth, takes a popular film series and expands upon themes and ideas only hinted at on the big screen. It uses its extended format to examine life for the average galactic citizen under Imperial rule, something the movies never really take the time to get into.

Another thing Andor and Alien: Earth have in common is their attention to detail and the way they perfectly recreate the retro-futuristic aesthetic of the first films in their respective franchises. Both shows somehow manage to nail the look of 70’s science fiction without coming off as cheesy or silly looking. If you have access to Disney+, we can’t recommend Andor enough, especially if you’re looking for a sci-fi series to watch following Alien: Earth.

What do you think, are these TV Shows good picks for a post Alien: Earth binge-watch, or is there something better? Let us know in the comments.

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Timothy Olyphant is back on the small screen, delivering a great performance in one of 2025’s most hyped TV shows. It’s essentially business as usual for the actor who, since Deadwood, has been about as reliable a star as you can get if you want to give your series some serious acting cred. From Justified through to the canceled-too-soon Santa Clarita Diet, he’s always worth watching, and that proves to be the case again in his latest role: the synthetic Kirsh in Alien: Earth, which reunites him with Noah Hawley after their work together on Fargo Season 4.

As Alien: Earth‘s reviews make clear, this is one of the franchise’s strongest entries, and the decision to finally go to Earth pays off. Kirsh is one of many reasons why. Olyphant is every bit as great as we’ve come to expect, and yet Kirsh is nothing like the characters we’ve seen the actor play before. The synth is odd, icy cold, and cuts a frustrated figure as he serves as mentor to Sydney Chandler’s Wendy (the Alien franchise’s new human-synth hybrid), and yet always compelling to watch. But as good as Olyphant is, it’s also a reminder that he needs to return to another show with its roots in Sci-Fi and the 1970s: The Mandalorian.

Olyphant’s debut in the Star Wars franchise came in The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 1, “Chapter 9 – The Marshal,” where he played Cobb Vanth, the episode’s eponymous Marshal. Olyphant brought all his Western genre experience to the Mayor of Mos Pelgo, instantly winning over audiences. There’s a mix of Han Solo-like coolness with genuine altruism that made him a fascinating, fantastic gunslinger-type character. The actor’s charisma shone through and paired perfectly with Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin, but there was also an emotional vulnerability to him that we rarely see in those roles.

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Vanth seemed like a new hero destined for bigger things, with plenty more of the character’s story to flesh out and definite interest in seeing it. He briefly returned in The Book of Boba Fett, where he was shot and almost killed by Cad Bane, but that itself clearly set up a new future for the character. Boba Fett‘s post-credits scene included Vanth being healed in a bacta tank, and his wounds also being treated by the Modifier, meaning he was going to receive some cybernetic upgrades.

Alas, that was currently the last we saw of him, but while he’s now gone fully synthetic in Alien: Earth, it would still be great to see what happens next to the Marshal after his own augmentations. The Book of Boba Fett had its problems, but Vanth wasn’t one of them; indeed, had the show focused on him, it might’ve fared better, because that’s how interesting a character he is. As Star Wars continues to explore this New Republic era, it would make sense for him to appear again. He’s not confirmed for The Mandalorian and Grogu, but that doesn’t mean a surprise appearance won’t happen.

The Star Wars franchise will never fully leave Tatooine behind, so there should always be hope for his return (Olyphant has played coy about coming back as Vanth). As the Mandoverse builds up to a climactic event with Grand Admiral Thrawn, it’s going to need all the heroes it can get. Olyphant is one of the very best of the Disney+ era, and it’d be a massive shame to let that go to waste.

Alien: Earth Episodes 1 & 2 are now streaming on Hulu. All episodes of The Mandalorian can be found on Disney+.

The post Timothy Olyphant’s New Sci-Fi Is Good, but He Must Return to This 48-Year-Old Franchise appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth takes the Alien franchise into a new frontier in TV episodic format. In case you didn’t notice, though, the new show opens on a surprising tribute to the original Alien. Taking place in the year 2120, Alien: Earth sees the crew of a Weyland-Yutani cargo ship, the USCSS Maginot, which gets decimated by a bloodthirsty xenomorph, causing the ship to crash-land on Earth, unleashing the xenomorph upon the local populace. While there have been numerous previous attempts to bring the xenomorphs to Earth – from some of the original concepts for Alien 3 to the Earth-based story of 2007’s Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem – Alien: Earth accomplishes that mission while building out the Alien mythos in some very unexpected ways.

With the first two episodes of the first two episodes of Alien: Earth also make some loving nods to the iconography of the first two Alien movies. One in particular unfolds right from the very opening moments of Alien: Earth, with the series beginning its story in a very familiar fashion to the original Alien.

Alien: Earth’s Opening Pays Tribute to the Opening of Alien (1979)

Alien: Earth‘s first episode opens with the crew of the USCSS Maginot awakening from an extended sleep in cryostasis, with the groggy crew exiting their cryochambers and eating breakfast. This scene is a near-perfect parallel to the opening of Ridley Scott’s Alien, in which the crew of the Nostromo similarly awakens from hypersleep as they near their return to Earth.

Moreover, the tribute to Alien is even more unmistakable from the musical cues, and by the way in which the show’s title is introduced. Like Alien‘s slow title reveal, Alien: Earth‘s title comes in the form of each letter gradually phasing into view until the title is completely spelled out. Adding the fact that Alien: Earth‘s 2120 timeframe takes place just two years before the 2122 setting of Alien, it is quite clear that the intent from the beginning was to build a connection to Scott’s film from the very first minutes of the series.

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Alien: Earth Recreates the Atmospheric Sci-Fi Feel of Alien (& Aliens)

What really stands out about the introductory episodes of Alien: Earth is the subtle seasoning of nostalgia, borrowed from both Alien and Aliens. In its first episode, Alien: Earth adopts the slow-burn horror movie style of Alien to remarkable effect, culminating in a rogue xenomorph slaughtering the crew of the Weyland-Yutani freighter, causing it to crash on Earth. Interestingly, Alien: Earth shifts gears in its second episode in a manner markedly similar to the tone shift of Alien to Aliens.

The second episode of Alien: Earth plays more like the action-horror hybrid of Aliens, with the xenomorph unleashed in a sprawling apartment complex and an elite team of soldiers trying to contain it. Neither of Alien: Earth’s first two episodes oversteps the line of nostalgic tribute into distracting territory, either, simply hewing to a similar rough template of Alien and Aliens while lovingly but subtly paying homage to both, like tipping its hat to the opening of Alien. In doing so, Alien: Earth also continues another trend the Alien franchise has seen of late.

Alien: Earth Is Continuing the Alien Franchise’s New Winning Streak

For every timeless classic the Alien franchise has produced like the original Alien and Aliens, it has also had its share of divisive entries like Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, and the Alien vs. Predator movies, with the franchise never quite managing to hit with the same impact as its first two installments. That is, until the release of Fede Álvarez’s acclaimed Alien: Romulus in 2024, which not only acts as a kind of narrative intersection for the Alien franchise (including some of the teases established in Ridley Scott’s Promotheus and Alien: Covenant), but one which emerged as one of the most widely beloved Alien movies since the original two.

With the strong early response to Alien: Earth, the Alien franchise is snowballing into quite a resurgence, not unlike that of the equally re-energized Predator franchise. Ultimately, Alien: Earth marks a new beginning of sorts for the Alien franchise as its first episodic entry, so it is fitting that the first moments of the show’s first episode should harken back to where it all began with the show’s Easter egg reference to Ridley Scott’s Alien.

The first two episodes of Alien: Earth are available to stream on Hulu, with new episodes releasing on Tuesdays.

The post Alien: Earth’s Opening Is A Perfect Easter Egg Callback to Ridley Scott’s Original Film appeared first on ComicBook.com.

In the latter half of the 20th century, director Ridley Scott redefined the look of cinematic sci-fi with the one-two punch of Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). With those two films, Scott almost singlehandedly took the colorful, hopeful space fantasy of Star Trek and Star Wars and gave it a dark, dystopian makeover. Alien and Blade Runner function like two sides of the same coin, presenting a grim future where large, faceless mega corporations run both Earth and space. Naturally, fans would want to put both franchises in the same universe. Unfortunately for them, Alien: Earth just killed any hope of an Alien/Blade Runner connection in canon.

Alien: Earth begins with a bit of onscreen text detailing the universe’s three forms of artificial life: cyborgs, synths, and hybrids. Noticeably absent are Replicants — Blade Runner‘s genetically engineered synthetic humans. With one single omission, the series effectively put an end to a 26-year-old fan theory that Rick Deckard and Ellen Ripley once breathed the same polluted air.

The Alien & Blade Runner Shared Universe Theory Began With A DVD Special Feature

The fan theory that Alien and Blade Runner are set in the same universe originally stems from the 1999 release of the Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD. The disc included a biography of Tom Skerrit’s Dallas in the bonus features, which briefly mentions that the captain worked for Blade Runner‘s Tyrell corporation before joining Weyland-Yutani. Fans took that one Easter Egg and ran with it, pointing out other similarities between the Alien and Blade Runner franchises as proof that they belong to a shared universe.

And make no mistake, there are several things Alien and Blade Runner have in common. Both movies inhabit bleak capitalist dystopias — one where corporations have effectively replaced the Government, and the Asian infiltration of American culture that dominated ’80s sci-fi is in full swing. From there, it’s not hard to speculate that Weyland-Yutani’s colony on LV-426 in Aliens is one of the same “off-world colonies” mentioned in Blade Runner.

Meanwhile, the Alien/Blade Runner shared universe fan theory turned out to also be a creator theory. In a commentary track on the same Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD, Ridley Scott expressed his opinion that the Earth the Nostromo crew was desperately trying to get back to was the same world inhabited by Deckard and the rest of the Blade Runner cast. Over a decade later, the Blu-ray of Scott’s confusing Alien prequel Prometheus would include a booklet containing a diary entry from Guy Pierce’s Peter Weyland that further cemented the connection between Alien and Blade Runner.

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In the diary entry, Weyland mentions a mentor who ran his company, “Like a god on top of a pyramid overlooking a city of angels,” and focused on “genetic abominations” rather than “simple robotics.” While Weyland never mentions Eldon Tyrell by name, a sentence about this “mentor” implanting his creations with “artificial memories” leaves little doubt who the CEO is talking about. These special features would seem to confirm the theory that Alien and Blade Runner are connected in some way, if not for two simple facts: 1) Special features aren’t generally considered canon, and 2) out of all the various creators involved with the Alien and Blade Runner franchises Ridley Scott is the only one pushing the narrative that the two IPs are related.

Creator-Fueled Fan Theories Are Nothing New

Believe it or not, directors expressing non-canon theories about their films is fairly common. A good example is Adam Marcus claiming that Jason Voorhees was a deadite. The director said this after including the Necronomicon in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday as an Easter Egg, but every single other Friday the 13th film contradicts his claim. The same can be said for Ridley Scott’s claim that two of his most influential films share a setting.

As fun as the idea of Alien and Blade Runner being set in the same universe is, nothing on screen has ever directly supported the idea. Neither Blade Runner 2049 nor Alien: Romulus makes any direct references to a shared universe between the two. Scott himself could have put a reference to the Tyrell Corp in Prometheus proper rather than burying it in the special features of the film’s home release if he really wanted to canonize the connection. Instead, we have the complete opposite with Alien: Earth putting the fan theory to rest once and for all.

Alien: Earth Shows Us An Earth Too Bright and Clean For Blade Runner

It’s not just the series’ deliberate lack of Replicants that disproves the fan theory but the way Earth itself appears. The planet — at least what we’ve seen so far — looks too clean, too nice to be the same Earth from Blade Runner. Then again, it seems to be too clean for a planet run by giant businesses as well, but that’s neither here nor there.

In addition to that, the series states that five corporations control the Earth and most of space: Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, Threshold, and Prodigy. One would assume that, were the Earth in Alien: Earth‘s title the same Earth from Blade Runner, one of those corporations would be the Tyrell corporation or, at the very least, the Wallace corporation from Blade Runner 2049. Instead, no replicants, no Tyrell/Wallace, and no rainy, pollution-ridden backdrop, point to no connection between Alien and Blade Runner.

But hey, thanks to Predator: Badlands, it looks like we’ll be getting a new crossover between the Predator and Alien franchises. If that proves to be successful, who knows, maybe we’ll get an official Blade Runner/Alien crossover someday. And until then, there’s nothing wrong with personal headcanons.

Were you disappointed in Alien: Earth putting the kibosh on Blade Runner and Alien being set in the same universe? Let us know in the comments.

The post Alien: Earth Just Killed This 26-Year-Old Fan Theory appeared first on ComicBook.com.

With the prevalence of streaming services, some of the biggest sci-fi franchises in Hollywood have been able to expand beyond the film medium, fleshing out their respective universes with stories the movies don’t have time to tell. For example, there are several Star Wars and Star Trek TV shows for fans to binge, introducing a bevy of new characters and storylines for audiences to fall in love with. Another legendary sci-fi franchise, one that’s been around for nearly 50 years, is looking to get in on the fun with its own TV series. And so far, it’s proven to be a sizable draw.

The franchise in question is Alien, and the TV show Alien: Earth is dominating the Disney+ charts. On FlixPatrol, which measures the popularity of titles on streaming services, Alien: Earth is the No. 1 TV series on Disney+ by a wide margin, easily surpassing the likes of Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, Grey’s Anatomy, and Modern Family. On the Disney+ app, Alien: Earth leads the Top 10 chart, beating out Rio.

Created by Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth premiered on FX and Hulu on August 12th. It received widely positive reviews, earning a 96% Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score. Alien: Earth‘s critical reception continues an encouraging franchise trend, as last year’s film Alien: Romulus also earned strong reviews. Alien: Earth has earned praise for being exceptionally scary and putting its own spin on franchise lore by introducing new creatures.

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As Alien fans check out the franchise’s latest offering on Hulu, they can also revisit one of the most iconic titles from its past. James Cameron’s Aliens, arguably the greatest action-horror film of the 1980s, is now available to watch on the streaming service.

The Alien franchise has enjoyed a nice resurgence over the past couple of years. Romulus was a box office hit, grossing $350.9 million against an $80 million production budget. A sequel to that film is in development, and Alien will have a presence in this fall’s Predator: Badlands. Elle Fanning’s character in the film, Thia, is a synthetic created by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg is open to doing more crossovers at some point. It’s nice to see Alien also achieve success on the small screen, and it’ll be interesting to see how Alien: Earth evolves from here. The show is set two years before the events of 1979’s Alien, but Hawley could find an entrypoint for more stories in this universe.

Previously, Hawley put a unique spin on the comic book adaptation with his work on the Marvel TV series Legion, which impressed viewers by taking them inside the troubled mind of David Haller. That set up was a launchpad for a variety of fascinating episodes that experimented with different genres and styles. Now, Hawley is finding similar acclaim with Alien: Earth. Not only has he refreshingly mixed things up by terrorizing viewers with new alien creatures, he may have even solved some continuity problems in the franchise’s convoluted timeline. It’s a shame Hawley never got a chance to realize his planned Star Trek movie, but he’s found a way to leave his mark on genre entertainment in more ways than one.

The post The Newest Entry in One of Sci-Fi’s Greatest Franchises Is Dominating Disney+ appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth lives up to its name, focusing on events on the planet humanity calls home rather than a ship in the far reaches of space. A cold war is brewing between five different companies that all share the same goal: to guide humanity into the future. The main players in Alien: Earth‘s first two episodes are the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the company responsible for most of the major events in the Alien franchise, and the Prodigy Corporation, which is the new kid on the block. Prodigy’s CEO, Boy Kavalier, is making a name for himself as the world’s youngest trillionaire, but his work is mysterious, as he keeps everything close to the vest.

The following contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Alien: Earth.

It comes to light that Kavalier is building synthetics with the sole purpose of placing human consciousness inside of them, creating a new form of life known as hybrids. Since adult minds are unable to survive the transfer, he targets children who don’t have long to live because they’re expendable. Getting a second chance at life is too much for the kids to pass up, so they agree to become hybrids and embrace their new bodies. However, the hybrids don’t yet know their own strength, as they have the potential to be the strongest beings in the universe.

Alien: Earth‘s Hybrids Blow Synthetics Out of the Water

Of course, Weyland-Yutani’s claim to fame in the majority of the Alien franchise is its synthetics, androids that appear human but are so much more. They often accompany humans on missions to serve as guides and science officers, dishing out probabilities and facts. Unfortunately, they aren’t all that helpful in the combat department because they aren’t designed for it. A synthetic’s best weapon is its mind, as it can predict events before they happen and create a solution.

David is a notable example of a formidable synthetic, as he wipes out an entire race of beings in order to conduct experiments on their bodies and create the perfect being. The only way David gets an edge, though, is by getting the drop on everyone. If he ever had to face off against a hybrid, he would have a tough time because a child’s mind is unpredictable.

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Cyborgs Could Give Hybrids Problems in the Alien Universe

The other kind of being that makes its franchise debut in Alien: Earth is an enhanced human known as a cyborg. Morrow, part of the crew of the USCSS Maginot, which goes down in Episode 1, is a ruthless cyborg who works for Weyland-Yutani. Despite his crew dying all around him, he shows little emotion, opting to focus on the mission. Surviving the crash proves just how durable cyborgs can be, and they’re just as formidable in the practicality department, with Morrow’s robotic hand having several notable attachments, including a knife and a torch.

Taking down a xenomorph is no easy feat, but Morrow does it easily when he catches up to the one that escaped the Maginot in Episode 2, pushing the idea that cyborgs are humanity’s strongest creation. The only issue with that logic is that a hybrid has yet to face off against a xenomorph, and if the creature reacts to it like it does to a synthetic, the cards may not be in its favor. The question is sure to have an answer by the end of Alien: Earth‘s first season, but as it stands, hybrids have the edge in the strength debate.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu.

How strong do you think Hybrids are in Alien: Earth? Do you think they could beat a Cyborg? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Alien: Earth – Are Hybrids Stronger Than Synthetics (and Cyborgs)? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

In space, no one can hear you scream… about how confusing Alien canon truly is. Comprised of several mainline films, spin-offs, novels, and video games, and no clear-cut line between what is canon and what isn’t, like Star Wars, the franchise can get, well, a bit convoluted. Any fans hoping that the newest edition to the Alien saga, Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, would help answer some of the franchise’s most burning questions are out of luck. So far, the new series has only further muddied the franchise’s timeline and introduced some new wrinkles to the current Alien continuity.

To be clear, these are only problems based on how they’re presented in the first two episodes of Alien: Earth. It’s entirely possible that further episodes will expand upon and make sense of these continuity-busting plot points. For now, though, here are five problems Alien: Earth creates within the current Alien canon.

1) Weyland-Yutani Knows About Xenomorphs Before the Events of Alien

Alien: Earth kicks off with a Weyland-Yutani science vessel crashing on Earth with several deadly creatures onboard. One of those creatures happens to be a xenomorph — or at least the facehugger stage of the xenomorph life cycle. The series never states explicitly that the xenomorph on board the crashed ship was born mid-voyage. Either way, it brings up the issue of the company being aware of facehuggers/xenomorphs years before the events of Alien.

One of the biggest questions fans have about the original Alien is “How much did the Weyland-Yutani corporation know about xenomorphs before sending the Nostromo to LV-426?” All the film tells us is that the Nostromo was on its way to Earth when it was diverted to investigate a “distress signal” coming from the uninhabited planet, LV-426. This was based upon a standing order that all company vessels must explore any situation involving potential alien life or else forfeit their crew’s wages.

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Later, after the existence of the xenomorph is revealed, Ash, the Nostromo’s Synth science officer, reveals a second directive only he is privy to: Special Order 937. That order states that the capture and preservation of the alien species is Weyland-Yutani’s highest priority, and the company considers the Nostromo’s crew expendable. Even taking Special Order 937 into account, all we know is that Weyland-Yutani knows about the existence of generic alien life on LV-426.

If the company did know there were facehuggers on LV-426, why not send a crew of Space Marines to capture one rather than a bunch of blue-collar space truckers? Furthermore, the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation, which is largely considered canon, details the moment Weyland-Yutani discovers what happened to the Nostromo crew, something they wouldn’t be eager to find out if they already had reason to believe a xenomorph had probably massacred the crew.

The two Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, further expand upon Weyland-Yutani’s xenomorph knowledge by revealing that the company knows about the Engineers — the species responsible for the black goo the android David uses to create the xenomorphs — and later, thanks to the short film Alien: Covenant – Advent, the black goo itself. Nothing in canon, however, implies that the Weyland-Yutani corporation knows about the xenomorphs specifically until Alien: Earth, that is.

Perhaps the series will establish that Weyland-Yutani has several clandestine departments, all ignorant of what the other are doing. But until then, Weyland-Yutani’s knowledge about the existence of xenomorphs at the time of Alien: Earth makes many canon events questionable.

2) If Weyland-Yutani Already Knows Where To Acquire Facehugger Eggs, Why Do So Many Movies Revolve Around the Company Trying To Figure Out How To Get One?

Alien: Earth creates an even bigger problem than the fact that Weyland-Yutani knew about xenomorphs before Alien, namely that they apparently know where to get them. Now granted, we know absolutely nothing about how the crashed ship acquired the dangerous specimens it’s carrying, but given that it’s carrying multiple facehuggers, it’s safe to assume that there’s more where they came from.

So why then is the company so hard-up for xenomorphs by the time of Alien that they’re willing to sacrifice an entire crew and a ship potentially worth billions just to maybe capture one? If Weyland-Yutani already knows where to get prime, Grade-A facehuggers, why in Aliens are they willing to sacrifice an entire colony, a marine unit, and again, billions of dollars worth of equipment to capture one?

Unless everyone who knows about the Weyland-Yutani mission to collect dangerous species dies by the end of Alien: Earth, the fact that anyone at the company knows a better way to get facehuggers than waiting for employees to stumble across them creates some pretty major plot holes in the franchise. And while we’re on the subject of dangerous alien lifeforms…

3) Weyland-Yutani Is Obsessed With Xenomorphs Despite Having Access to at Least Four Other Deadly Species

Alien: Earth introduces four new alien species alongside the tried and true xenomorphs: an eyeball octopus, a pair of bloodsucking insects, a carnivorous plant, and briefly, a winged monstrosity. From what we’ve seen already in the first two episodes, each of these new aliens have the potential to be as deadly as a xenomorph, at least in a one-on-one encounter. But even if a traditional xenomorph is better suited for wholesale slaughter, so what?

That may sound glib, but it’s an honest question. We are told in other Alien media that Weyland-Yutani wants a xenomorph for their Bio-Weapons Division, implying that they are going to use it to develop new weapons/soldiers, not try and tame it to fight directly for them. Presumably, whatever combat advancements could be gleaned from dissecting and reverse engineering a xenomorph, something similar and just as effective could be created based on the biology of one of the other species.

Even if the xenomorph represents the perfect killing machine, surely something 80% as effective but easier to retrieve/control would be a better investment.

4) Alien: Earth Introduces Two New Types of Artificial Lifeforms, but We Only See Synths Throughout the Rest of the Alien Series

Alien: Earth begins with the following on-screen text: “In the future, the race for immortality will come in 3 guises: Cybernetically enhanced humans: Cyborgs, Artificially intelligent beings: Synths, and synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness: Hybrids” Meanwhile, since 1979 the only artificial life we’ve seen in the Alien franchise are Synths, the Alien universe’s version of androids, which begs the question, what happened to the Cyborgs and Hybrids?

Given that the show’s main Hybrid, Wendy, is shown constantly forgoing orders in favor of doing things her way, it’s entirely possible that Hybrids — an invention of Alien: Earth‘s new mega-corporation Prodigy — are quickly discarded in favor of the more easily controllable Synths. But Cyborgs? We can’t help but feel like many situations throughout the Alien franchise could have been improved by cybernetic implants.

Like many of the other entries on this list, these previously unmentioned artificial lifeforms shine a light on the biggest problem with prequels: the desire to add new elements to an already established universe while somehow justifying why the audience has never seen them before.

It’s possible that Noah Hawley will take the easy way out and proclaim that Hybrids and Cyborgs have always been a part of the Alien franchise, we’ve just never seen them. However, we’d like to think that such a cheap narrative copout is beneath the Fargo creator. Hopefully, Alien: Earth will give fans a legitimate reason behind the sudden absence of Hybrids and cyborgs following the series.

5) Alien: Earth‘s Xenomorph Runs Around on All Fours

We admit this one isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things as the other list entries, but the fact that the normally bipedal xenomorphs are now suddenly quadrapeds is indeed weird. Xenomorphs traditionally adopt some of the physical characteristics found in their host species. Most of the aliens we’ve seen throughout the franchise have gestated in humans, so for the most part, they stand and walk upright. When a xenomorph gestates in a four-legged animal, like in the underrated Alien 3, it then walks on all fours like that animal.

The xenomorph in Alien: Earth, however, is hinted to have burst out of one of the humans aboard the ship carrying it, but for some reason runs around on four legs like a dog or cat. Maybe it’s a stylistic choice, but it definitely seems to contradict some already established xenomorph lore.

What did you think about Alien: Earth deviating from Alien canon? Did it bother you, or do you have faith that Noah Hawley will give everything a satisfactory explanation by the end of the season? Let us know in the comments.

The post Alien: Earth Has Already Created These 5 Problems With Alien Continuity appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth is proving to be a hit for FX-Hulu after the two-episode premiere event, in terms of review scores, and the necessary buzz indicative of a new show’s impact. Along with all the popular fan theories about Alien: Earth come a lot of new questions the show (and possibly the larger franchise) has to answer. From the mysterious new alien lifeforms that have now been set loose on Earth, to the powers and potential of the world’s machine being trifecta (synthetics, cyborgs, and the newly-invented “hybrids”).

It may be a minor detail of Alien: Earth‘s first episodes, but it’s certainly a conspicuous one fans are noticing: The halls of the Boy Kavalier’s (Samuel Blenkin) “Neverland” research facility are growing with some kind of black goo, which requires a mysterious figure in a hazmat suit to combat. Knowing everything we do about the Alien franchise, it’s hard to believe this is just a coincidence.

Have We Seen This Black Substance In Alien Before?

Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) is always playing 4-D chess with multiple levels of meaning, visually and thematically. While Boy Kavalier may not react to it, the sight of the hazmat worker and the black goo on the walls is obviously going to be triggering to anyone who has watched the Alien movies – and especially the prequel films directed by Ridley Scott, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant.

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What’s especially curious is that Hawley and FX executives have been pointing out that his show will honor the continuity of the original Alien (1979), as well as the recent film Alien: Romulus from Fede Álvarez, ostensibly side-stepping Scott’s prequels. That gets tricky, as Romulus did borrow from Scott’s prequels for a key part of its story: Weyland-Yutani’s development of Compound Z-01. The Renasiance Space Station’s entire mission was harvesting the xenomorph corpse from the USCSS Nostromo‘s wreckage, extracting the mutagenic goo (“Prometheus Fire”) from the creature, and filtering out the genetic features that make xenomorphs highly durable and able to withstand any environment. The ultimate goal for the megacorporation was human augmentation and life extension – goals that are conspicuously similar to what Prodigy is doing.

Has Prodigy Already Experimented With Xenomorph DNA?

The hybrid program that Boy Kavalier is pioneering would potentially going to be the biggest leap forward for human augmentation – that is, if the timeline of Alien didn’t already portend its doom. Seeing how quickly Boy changed focus from his hybrids to securing the creatures Weyland-Yutani collected suggests that he may already have bioweapon projects of his own locked away in a secret lab somewhere. It would be a major twist in Alien: Earth‘s story to find out that Boy already has a sample of that mutagenic goo in his possession, and is all too aware of its infectious dangers. It would actually explain a lot of early implications about Neverland: why Boy relies more on synthetic beings than humans (less potential for infection); why he’s willing to risk the Lost Boys to retrieve the creatures (he’s already connected the data on the xenomorphs to the black goo); it could also explain the mystery of Wendy’s enhnaced abilities and sensory powers, as well as why her hybrid transfer was kept secret from her family.

If Boy and his scientists injected Marcy (Florence Bensberg) with some black goo compound before she became “Wendy,” then it would(after all, what was there to lose if the host body died?), then it could mean Wendy is actually the pinnacle of biological and mechanical life, and a much more important figure in the Alien canon than anyone knows.

Then again, the black substance on Prodigy’s walls could also be a subtle ode from Hawley to just how bad environmental conditions are getting on Earth, and why the need for humanity to evolve is getting so dire.

Alien: Earth is streaming on FX-Hulu.

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The Xenomorphs may not find Prodigy City as fun a playground as a ship with a crew that has no chance of escaping. In Alien: Earth, after a Weyland-Yutani ship goes down, Ms. Yutani wants to retrieve the dangerous cargo, which is now running amok. However, Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) believes he has a claim to whatever is on the ship because it’s now in his territory. To ensure he gets everything he wants, Kavalier agrees to send his “Lost Boys,” a group of new hybrid beings, combining synthetic bodies with human consciousnesses inside. They’re untested in the field, but Prodigy has high hopes for them, especially after learning what their leader, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) is capable of.

Wendy is happy to play Prodigy’s game because her brother, Joe (Alex Lawther), is a medic in Prodigy City and one of the responders to the scene of the crash. There’s an opportunity for her to see him again, so she doesn’t care about what dangers lie ahead. Unfortunately, Wendy is in more trouble than she realizes because of a strange buzzing sound, which only she can hear, that keeps bothering her.

There’s Something Strange Going on in Prodigy City in Alien: Earth

The culprit behind the crash is a xenomorph drone that gets loose. Of course, at this point in the timeline, the events of the first Alien movie have yet to take place, meaning the Weyland-Yutani crew isn’t aware of what Facehuggers are capable of. The familiar horrors take place, and the ship crashes into a tower full of people. Prodigy Search and Rescue answers the call and shows up on the scene, ready to help. As they make their way through the ship, though, they start to realize the crash didn’t kill most of the crew. Some of them died from having their chest burst open, while others kicked the bucket in strange ways. It soon comes to light that creatures other than the Xenomorph are free, such as a bug-like monster that sucks the blood out of people.

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When Wendy and her friends arrive in Prodigy City, they meet the extraterrestrial threats, but some of them are more inquisitive than frightened. They realize they aren’t humans anymore and don’t break easily, so they push forward as if they’re indestructible. While Wendy embraces that attitude, she can’t shake this strange feeling because she keeps hearing a buzzing sound in her ears. Alien: Earth doesn’t explain the cause of it in its first two episodes, but there are plenty of possibilities, and none of them mean good things for Wendy.

Alien: Earth‘s Hybrids May Not Be as Perfect as They Seem

The easy explanation for Wendy’s issue is that one of the aliens is in her head. xenomorphs don’t have that kind of ability, so it would have to be one of its fellow lab rats that’s behind the whole thing. However, that scenario doesn’t explain why Wendy gets singled out. It might be because she’s the first to undergo the hybrid procedure, but that seems unlikely at the moment. Alien: Earth does go out of its way to point out that Wendy is different from her counterparts, being able to control technology without being taught how to do it and withstand frequencies too high for the human ear. She may be evolving, which allows her to form a connection to higher forms of life.

Kavalier never goes into detail about what he uses for the hybrid creation process. Still, his excitement at the thought of stealing Weyland-Yutani’s property sure makes it seem like he’s aware of the power that resides in the cosmos. He could have some of his own back on Neverland and is using it to create the hybrids. That would explain why the buzzing sound gets worse when Wendy gets close to the eggs in Episode 2, as she’s just as much alien as she is human. The absence of hybrids from the rest of the Alien franchise makes it feel like Wendy is living on borrowed time, and if that’s really the case, there’s no doubt that the buzzing sound could have something to do with her impending demise.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu.

What do you think the buzzing sound that Wendy is hearing in Alien: Earth is? Do you think she’s forming a connection to the Xenomorph? Let us know in the comments below!

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Like the Yautja are synonymous with the Predator franchise, the Xenomorph is synonymous with the Alien franchise. Every time a crew steps on a ship, there’s a good chance a Facehugger is going to get hold of one of them and make them a vessel for the next step in their evolution. The latest project in the Alien franchise, FX’s series Alien: Earth, begins with the same formula, following the crew of the Weyland-Yutani ship Maginot as they transport creatures from the darkest corners of space back home. There are Facehuggers among the crowd, which leads to the birth of a Xenomorph that wreaks havoc on the ship.

Alien: Earth‘s Xenomorph is only the tip of the iceberg, though, as its escape unleashes all sorts of creatures, each one with a gimmick more terrifying than the last. Through two episodes, it’s clear that, while the Xenomorph and its eggs will lead the charge once again, there’s no reason to overlook the rest of the extraterrestrial threats because they may very well be the future of the franchise.

“Alien” Means More Than Just Xenomorph in Alien: Earth

Since the events of the first Alien movie have yet to occur, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation isn’t focused on any one kind of creature. It’s been sending ships out into the cosmos to collect anything and everything, and when Alien: Earth kicks off, the Maginot is nearing its destination. Unfortunately, the crew loses control, and everyone dies except for a cyborg, Morrow, who hides from the Xenomorph as the ship crashes into a tower in Prodigy City. The Prodigy Corporation quickly sends out a Search and Rescue team to contain the situation, but they’re in over their heads because monsters are loose. A bug-like creature attaches itself to two grunts and removes all of the blood from their bodies. A couple of Prodigy hybrid discovers the terrifying scene, but they can’t spend much time wrapping their heads around it because something else reveals itself.

A regular house cat is on the crashed ship, giving itself a bath when the hybrids walk in. When it turns its head, however, its eye jumps out of the socket, unleashing another beast with tentacles that looks to replace one of the hybrid’s peepers. They call out for Kirsh, their synthetic handler, but it takes him a minute to arrive because he’s outside examining another alien that looks similar to a flower bud. It doesn’t seem as hostile as the creatures inside the lab, but there is still plenty of time left in Alien: Earth for it to last out. No matter what the bud creature does, though, it’s clear that the FX show is taking the franchise in a new direction, one that doesn’t rely on the Xenomorph for all its scares.

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The Alien Franchise Is Finally Moving Beyond the Xenomorph

While there is always some variation of the Xenomorph around, the real terror in the Alien franchise comes from the humans. Corporations like Weyland-Yutani and Prodigy are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead in the information race, whether it’s creating hybrid humans or unleashing monsters onto the world. With that being the case, there’s no need for the Xenomorph to be the sole focus anymore. Noah Hawley and his collaborators are proving that every distant planet houses its fair share of dangerous lifeforms that are capable of being every bit as formidable as the ones that hatch from the black eggs. However, they aren’t the first ones to try it because 2024’s Alien: Romulus also swings for the fences with its Big Bad.

A group of young people travels to a Weyland-Yutani space station in Romulus to search for a big score. When they arrive, they accidentally unleash Facehuggers that begin to pick them off and unleash Xenomorphs. The chaos leaves Kay, who is pregnant, badly injured, so she injects herself with a fluid harvested from the Facehuggers to help her heal. The process rewrites her DNA and changes her baby, turning him into a human-xenomorph hybrid. The creature grows to a giant size quickly and nearly kills the rest of the group before being shot into space. While Romulus‘ monster seems much more dangerous than the eye creature in Alien: Earth, they’re two sides of the same coin, helping usher in a new era for the popular horror franchise.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu.

Do you like the new creatures that Alien: Earth is introducing? Do you want the franchise to continue to move away from the Xenomorph? Let us know in the comments below!

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Alien: Earth has premiered its first two episodes on FX-Hulu, and it already seems like an overwhelming majority of fans are enjoying showrunner Noah Hawley’s (Fargo, Legion) take on the Alien franchise. That said, Alien: Earth experienced more turbulence going from production to the screen than the spaceship whose fiery crash-landing kicks off the events of the show. One of the biggest points of both confusion and tension in the development of Alien: Earth was its place in the franchise timeline. By ultimately setting the show two years before the events of the original Alien (1979), the Alien TV series immediately invited a lot of probing questions from diehard fans and continuity purists.

Well, two episodes aren’t enough to answer all the questions floating around the Alien fandom; however, Alien: Earth may have created space for fans to explain one of the bigger continuity issues that has plagued the Alien franchise for over a decade now.

Prometheus & Alien Covenant Created Some Big Problems

In the 2010s, Alien director Ridley Scott finally returned to the franchise… sort of. Scott endeavored to make a prequel film/spinoff of Alien, titled Prometheus (2012), which eschewed the traditional prequel format to examine deeper themes of creationism and new scientific theories (of the time) about extraterrestrial life and its possible connections to Earth’s origins. While Prometheus was a modest box office hit by modern blockbuster scale, its $403.4 million haul is still the highest for the Alien franchise (ignoring inflation), and its reputation as a heady sci-fi/horror cult-hit has only grown with time. The biggest criticism from fans, however, was that Prometheus only gave fans barest sketches and inferences about the origin of the facehugger parasites, the xenomorph drones, and the crashed ship on LV-426 in the original film.

Scott’s sequel film, Alien: Covenant, tried to be more direct with its prequel ties, but ended up confusing things even further. SPOILERS: The twist ending reveals that Prometheus’s nefarious synthetic, David (Michael Fassbender), has killed and replaced the USCSS Covenant‘s noble android officer Walter (also Fassbender), which was great for shock value, but not continuity. The film posited the idea that it was David who experimented with the black goo of the Engineer species while stranded on their homeworld, used it to genetically engineer the first facehugger eggs, and subsequently gave “birth” to the iconic version of the xenomorphs the franchise is known for. However, that origin story created massive new questions – the most prominent being how David went from spreading xenomorph samples across the galaxy, to an entire Engineer ship full of eggs crashing on LV-426, sealing the ill fate of the USCSS Nostromo and its crew, who are eventually sent by Weyland-Yutani to investigate.

Alien: Earth May Explain the Continuity Gap Between Alien & Its Prequel Films

Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley made the controversial choice to side-step the events of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, choosing instead to build within the new continuity shared by Alien (1979), and the recent reboot film Alien: Romulus. So while the show may not answer how that Engineer ship ended up on LV-426, it does give the franchise continuity a key off-ramp. The premise of Alien: Earth sees a Weyland-Yutani Corporation space vessel, the USCSS Maginot, crash-land on Earth after a nearly 70-year voyage into the deepest regions of space, searching for dangerous lifeforms. One of the five species the Maginot crew captured is the xenomorphs (obviously), or more specifically, a small collection of facehugger eggs that are brought back to Earth (which promptly hatch and run rampant).

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Hawley has now established the retcon that Weyland-Yutani knew the xenomorph species existed decades before the events of Alien. Not just knew about the deadly alien creatures, but coveted them as the ultimate bio-weapons, thanks to the exploration and research done by the Maginot. Hardcore fans could extend the theory even further to fully connect the franchise continuity, to include the idea that the Maginot was actually sent out by Weyland-Yutani to track down David (a rogue company android), the USCSS Covenant (a company colonization vessel), or both. That could explain how the Maginot crew eventually discovered and captured the facehugger eggs, after catching up with David.

Whether you include Prometheus or Covenant in the theory or not, the franchise continuity is now cemented in the fact that Weyland-Yutani had knowledge of xenomorphs before the events of Alien, as well as motivation and means to keep searching for new xenomorph samples, after the ones in Alien: Earth presumably get destroyed (eventually). This retcon makes the fate of the Nostromo even more tragic, as it now seems like Ripley and her crewmates were purposefully sent to LV-426 as sacrificial lambs. It’s why the company was so quick to label the crew expendable, and why secret orders were given to synthetic officer Ash to ensure the xenomorph sample got delivered. The company didn’t want to fail a second time to collect it. By the time of Alien: Romulus, Weyland-Yutani eventually gets its wish (third time’s the charm): xenomorph DNA it can use to reverse-engineer the all-powerful (and volatile) Prometheus serum.

Alien: Earth is streaming on FX-Hulu.

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Bringing the Alien franchise to the small screen is a huge risk. Up to this point, anytime Ridley Scott or anyone else wanted to deliver a terrifying story featuring Xenomorphs, they went the movie route. In fact, Alien is on a bit of a hot streak in theaters after the success of Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus. It’s hard to turn down an idea when Noah Hawley is leading the charge, though. Best known for the Fargo TV series and Legion, Hawley knows how to play in someone else’s sandbox and elevate the material. Alien: Earth is the same kind of challenge, and Hawley is going all out to ensure that it’s a winner for FX.

The following contains spoilers for Alien: Earth.

Like all great Alien projects, despite featuring monsters big and small and plenty of androids, Alien: Earth is a human story at its core. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) wants nothing more than to reunite with her brother, Joe (Alex Lawther), who believes she’s dead because she was suffering from a terminal illness. The connection between Wendy and Joe is so important that Hawley finds a way to place himself in the middle of it.

Noah Hawley Is Hiding in Plain Sight in Alien: Earth

Hawley pulls a similar trick to Ridley Scott, who many don’t know hid his own blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo in the original Alien. He voiced the chestbursting alien for that key scene. Decades later, Noah Hawley appears in a flashback sequence, very briefly, playing the father of lead characters Wendy and Joe.

Following the obligatory opening that focuses on a ship in space hauling strange creatures, Alien: Earth shifts its focus to Marcy, a young girl who’s very sick. The Prodigy Corporation is taking care of her on Neverland, a remote island where they’re attempting to do the impossible: transfer a human consciousness into a synthetic. Marcy is the first to undergo the procedure, and to make the process smoother for her, they show her clips from the Disney movie Peter Pan. Once she wakes up, she goes by a new name, Wendy, and quickly embraces her role as big sister to the other hybrids.

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In between giving lessons to the other kids, Wendy spends time watching over her brother, Joe, who works as a medic in Prodigy City. He doesn’t know she’s alive because the hybrid experiments are a secret, and Prodigy CEO Boy Kavalier doesn’t want any loose ends. Regardless, Wendy holds out hope that she will see her brother again one day. She even finds a way to send him a message via a Prodigy robot, which drums up happy memories from their childhood. Joe isn’t ready to let go of the past because he’s the only member of his family left, having lost his father a year prior. However, there is still a chance that Joe and Wendy’s dad still has a major role in Alien: Earth.

Joe and Wendy’s Connection to Their Dad Could Be a Major Factor Going Forward

Since Joe is a little older than his sister, he remembers more about his dad. The thing they would bond over the most was baseball, with Joe being named after New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. All these years later, Joe still listens to games and makes a baseball reference whenever he can. The mission to the Maginot crash site even gives Joe a chance to reminisce a bit when he stumbles upon a rich man’s memorabilia collection that features a famous ball hit by Reggie Jackson. However, Joe’s focus changes when Wendy walks into the room and starts acting strangely. At first, he brushes her off because he learns she’s a synthetic, but her friend, Slightly, spills the beans about her true identity.

After the initial shock, Joe embraces Wendy, finding comfort in the fact that she’s still alive and part of his life again. Unfortunately, Xenomorphs don’t care about love, with the one that escaped the Maginot ruining the reunion by showing up and tackling Joe. Alien: Earth Episode 3 will surely follow Wendy’s efforts to save her brother, opening the door for the show to provide more insight into Hawley’s character. After all, Joe learns that his dad gave up his sister to a strange corporation without telling him, which isn’t an easy thing to move past.

Alien: Earth is streaming on Hulu.

Were you surprised to see Noah Hawley in Alien: Earth? Do you hope he shows up as Joe and Wendy’s dad in future episodes? Let us know in the comments below!

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In 1979, director Ridley Scott and writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett introduced fans to the iconic heroine of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and a new kind of space terror that would eventually launch one of the biggest sci-fi horror franchises ever. Over the years, several filmmakers, including James Cameron, David Fincher, and Fede Álvarez have expanded the Alien universe. Entries into the franchise have included sequels, prequels, and even a couple of crossovers with the Predator movies. Emmy Award winner Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo, Legion) decided it was time to bring the world of Alien close to home for the first time with FX’s prequel series, Alien: Earth, which is set two years before the original film and has premiered to rave reviews.

Alien: Earth Episode 1, “Neverland,” and Episode 2, “Mr. October,” aired on FX on Tuesday night and also began streaming simultaneously on Hulu and Disney+.

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Alien: Earth is set in the year 2120, where the Earth is governed by five mega-corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. The official synopsis explains that in this era, “cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness).” The show’s protagonist, “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler), is the first hybrid prototype made from the consciousness of a terminally ill young girl. More hybrid beings, known as the “Lost Boys,” are created, all fatally sick human children whose consciousnesses are transferred into adult android bodies. Their lives are forever changed when a Weyland-Yutani research vessel, the USCSS Maginot, carrying dangerous alien lifeforms, crash-lands in a city owned by Prodigy.

“Alien: Earth manages to succeed where so many other television spinoffs of film franchises often fail: it finds a way to justify its long-form format,” ComicBook’s Kofi Outlaw wrote in his review. “The series is smartly paced across its eight-episode run; slower stretches of character development and world-building segue smoothly into several key arcs of action-horror that feel on par with the feature films. FX doesn’t side-step the production demands: the set pieces, costumes, creatures, and overall visual effects feel cinematic when required, even if other scenes of dialogue or development use more budgeted means like blue screen backgrounds to save on budget. If nothing else, Alien: Earth is proof of concept that the franchise “works” in the TV format.

“As with any long-form TV series that’s built off a movie, there are inevitable points of lag in Alien: Earth, or subplots that just don’t carry the same gravitas as others,” Outlaw continued. “Luckily, Hawley keeps the majority of the screen time where it needs to be focused: on the peril that is either already happening or about to strike. He is especially adept at creating compelling sci-fi concepts to explore. That includes Wendy, the Lost Boys, and their evolution from children into advanced androids, or the choice to make the new alien creatures characters in and of themselves, with a surprising amount of scenes dedicated to their… “point of view.” Those sequences are wonderfully weird and creepy, even if they ironically reduce the xenomorphs to being the least interesting feature of the show. Clearly, Hawley was disappointed that a franchise called Alien hadn’t done more with creature concepts. Finally, amidst the thrills and horror, there’s a good amount of mystery spread out across the series, resulting in some fun ways to play with the timeline, and/or drop twist reveals in later episodes.”

Cast & Crew

Led by Chandler (Sugar, Don’t Worry Darling), daughter of Emmy winner Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), Alien: Earth also stars Emmy nominee Timothy Olyphant (Justified, Deadwood, FX’s Fargo), Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror), Babou Ceesay (Into the Badlands), Alex Lawther (The End of the F***ing World), Adrian Edmondson (EastEnders), David Rysdahl (No Exit), Essie Davis (The Babadook), Lily Newmark (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Erana James (The Wilds), Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger), Jonathan Ajayi (Vigil), Kit Young (Shadow and Bone), Diêm Camille (Washington Black), Moe Bar-El (The Bureau), and Sandra Yi Sencindiver (Foundation).

Scott is an executive producer on the series, along with David W. Zucker (The Good Wife), Joseph Iberti (HBO’s Watchmen), Dana Gonzales (Fargo), and Clayton Krueger (Dope Thief). The show’s writers include Hawley, Robert De Laurentiis, Bobak Esfarjani, Lisa Long, Maria Melnik, and Migiz Pensoneau, with Hawley, Gonzales, and Ugla Hauksdóttir directing.

How to Watch

New episodes of Alien: Earth will air on FX every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET and will also be available to stream concurrently on Hulu and Disney+. The remaining episodes will air through September 23rd, when the season finale, Episode 8 “The Real Monsters,” drops.

The Alien movie franchise is also available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

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It’s good news for the Alien franchise after the reveal of the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Noah Hawley’s new Alien: Earth series. Alien: Earth kicked off with a double-premiere on August 12, 2025, acting as a prequel to the original Alien, taking place two years before the 1979 movie. The series has brought the iconic Xenomorph to Earth for the first time, only a year after 2024’s Alien: Romulus expanded the franchise in an exciting new standalone spinoff, and the success of both these projects spells good news for the franchise’s continuation.

With a critics score of 93% and an audience rating of 80%, Alien: Earth has quickly become one of the Alien franchise’s most successful instalments. The critics score only falls behind 1979’s Alien (94%) and 1986’s Aliens (93%), while Alien: Romulus’ audience score also beats Alien: Earth, racking up 85%, with a critics score of 80%. The fact that both Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth have achieved high levels of success for the franchise in quick succession spells good news after three decades of disappointing releases, as it means the franchise is continuing its upwards trend.

Ever since James Cameron delighted us all with the release of Aliens in 1986, the franchise has struggled to match the sequel’s success, and that of the original. 1992’s Alien 3, 1997’s Alien Resurrection, 2004’s Alien vs. Predator, and 2007’s Alien vs. Predator: Requiem all failed to capture the imagination of audiences. 2012’s Prometheus and 2017’s Alien: Covenant were more popular, but still put the franchise in a confusing place. Now, it seems the franchise’s future exists with standalone projects, with Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth excelling among fans.

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After Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, many expected Ridley Scott to return to develop a third movie in his prequel trilogy. This would have bridged the gap between the 2104-set Covenant and the 2122-set Alien, but Scott has recently suggested that he may actually be done with the Alien franchise. He leaves it up to new creators and filmmakers to develop standalone stories in the franchise, expanding it into places we may never have imagined, and this has already birthed Romulus and Earth, both of which are wholly unique, yet connect brilliantly back to the Alien franchise’s overarching story and themes.

Alien: Earth has somewhat bridged this gap, taking place in 2120, yet there are still 16 years unaccounted for. It’s possible Alien: Earth could explain what came of David’s (Michael Fassbender) Xenomorph embryos from Covenant, and future standalone stories could address the franchise’s other wild mysteries. While there aren’t any officially confirmed upcoming Alien projects after Alien: Earth’s release, the success of Alien: Romulus last year and Alien: Earth now mean its all but inevitable that the franchise will continue to grow for years to come.

Have you watched Alien: Earth’s first two episodes? What did you think of the new series? Let us know in the comments!

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Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley clearly didn’t think the franchise was doing enough with the implications of its title. Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) imagined the kind of nightmare lifeforms that existed out in the far regions of space; however, since that time, the franchise (and even Scott himself) has expanded the scope of what shapes those nightmares take, introducing variant forms of the iconic xenomorph creature, as well as the “black goo” that can result in wildly unpredicatable mutations.

With Alien: Earth, Hawley is cutting through some of the more convoluted franchise mythos by revealing that facehugger eggs and Xenomorph Drone from Alien were just one of five species that the Weyland-Yutani megacorporation discovered in the depths of space, in a quest to develop the next era of bioweapons. Though we only get teasers of the horrors to come in the first two episodes, here are the new creatures Alien: Earth introduces.

NOTE: Obviously, the facehugger eggs and the resulting xenomorph drones will be part of the show, so we won’t waste time re-treading that road. Here are the four new creatures Alien has added to its mythos:

4) The Eye Octopus

This mysterious parasitic creature is seemingly just as dangerous as the xenomorphs. Keeping with the traditions of the original Alien (which never actually named its creature), it has no official name (yet), so we’ll go with the most obvious associations by calling it the ‘Eye Octopus’ parasite. When the Prodigy Corporation team arrives at the Maginot crash site, it’s clear that the Eye Octopus creature has gotten free and intends to escape. Thankfully, the “Lost Boys” hybrid squad and their synthetic handler Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) manage to wrangle the wily creature.

The Eye Octopus is curiously given POV moments during its scenes onscreen, immediately suggesting it is an intelligent, thinking organism – and a sharp, cunning one at that. In terms of function, this creature fits perfectly into the Alien franchise: it moves about on a gelatinous, tentacled body akin to a tiny octopus, only its “head” is a single eye, whose iris can alter from a focused singular view to multi-directional viewing like a fly. When it “attacks,” the parasite can stretch its powerful tentacles exponentially far to snag a victim, before forcibly ripping out one of its eyes and embedding itself in its place. The parasite’s tentacles act as synaptic wiring, reanimating and controlling the host body, whether it is alive or dead. So, while it may not carry the same widespread infectious threat as a xenomorph outbreak, the unpredictable variation in potential host bodies makes the Eye Octopus a dire threat in a different way.

3) Blood Bugs

The other creatures (besides the xenomorph) that get a spotlight in the first two episodes of Alien: Earth are the blood bugs. Like the Eye Octopus, these bugs are shown to be intelligent and cunning; after getting loose during the crash, the bugs bide their time until two Prodigy search and rescue team members are left behind, bound together, in the ship’s ruined lab. With their victims alone and helpless, the bugs attack, burrowing into the men’s bodies and feeding on blood and guts until the sacks at the rear section of their bodies are swollen with gore, dragging behind them. Investigation by Hermit (Alex Lawther) and the Prodigy S&R team turns up records that hint at the bugs being like the xenomorph species: they are implanted inside a host, gestate there until the egg sac ruptures, and multiple bugs are released inside the host’s body. Beyond their ability to hunt, spin some kind of webbing, and single-handedly kill an adult human, the bugs’ full range of abilities is still unknown.

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2) The Flower Bud

There’s not much to say about the flower bud creature; it certainly makes its presence felt in the first episodes. The flower bud is technically the first specimen we see locked away on the Maginot at the start of the show; it’s also conspicuously hanging in a hallway after the crash. That said, outside of stalking Kirsh and Tootles (Kit Young) with a spiked proboscis protruding from its bud (which looks plenty deadly), there’s not much to glean from this creature.

Will it eventually open to reveal some new nightmare that’s been gestating inside? Or is this Alien‘s version of a Venus Fly Trap? The answer may lie in a brief computer screen dossier seen in one of the earlier Alien: Earth trailers…

1) Flying Bug

Did you even catch sight of it? If you go back and watch the first scene of Alien: Earth, and the establishing shot of the Maginots‘ cargo hold containing the specimens, you’ll see it: One of the cargo boxes holds an alien insectoid bug like a dog-sized fly, which hops up onto the glass of the case. If you didn’t keep count, this species of bug is the fifth and final sample that the Maginots‘ crew gathered (RIP). Obviously, time was limited in the first two episodes of Alien: Earth; the flying bug species didn’t seem to escape in the crash, so maybe it’ll get a spotlight in later episodes. For now, some early promo posters for Alien: Earth are the only tease of what the creature’s design will be.

On the whole, we presume that Alien: Earth will use its 8-episode pace to give each new creature a moment of feature. For now, which new creature is your (early) favorite design? Is this an exciting expansion of the franchise lore, or do you prefer the xenomorph to be the star of the show (literally)? Alien: Earth is streaming on FX-Hulu.

The post Alien: Earth – Every New Monster Species Explained appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Any of the many understandable concerns about bringing the Alien world to the small screen with Alien: Earth seem to be at least somewhat addressed by the early, wildly positive reviews for this Noah Hawley TV program. Not only that, but the first Alien: Earth reviews have suggested that the production especially excels in exploring storytelling and thematic territory that isn’t reminiscent of past Alien endeavors. If the general public’s response is similar to the critical reception, then Alien: Earth could be acclaimed enough to overhaul what people think is possible within this franchise.

Between this and last year’s Alien: Romulus, critical raves have finally returned to the Alien franchise. That’s good news for long-time devotees of the saga, but it does confirm that the 2010s era of this franchise is well and truly done. With Romulus being a box office smash and Alien: Earth garnering raves, the Prometheus/Alien: Covenant era of Alien prequel material is officially finished.

What Was The Alien Prequel Era of Storytelling?

20th Century Fox has long struggled figuring out how to parlay the Alien brand name into further movies. After 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, the solution seemed to be putting those nasty Xenomorphs in two Alien vs. Predator movies. For the 2010s, the new M.O. for the saga was bringing back director Ridley Scott for further installments set in the past. Titles like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant were all about filling in the gaps in the Alien lore, including detailing who and what that “space jockey” was and revealing the origins of the Xenomorphs.

Scott openly expressed a desire to keep on making more Alien entries after Covenant, while, as late as fall 2017, former 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider revealed that the studio was gung-ho about doing a follow-up to Covenant. That was just two months before Disney announced its intentions to buy News Corp. entertainment entities like 20th Century Fox. With that, a new era of Alien was on the horizon. Disney and the newly christened 20th Century Studios were now eager to hand off the franchise to new creative figures, like Fede Alvarez and Hawley.

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With this shift, titles in this saga were no longer going back to the “vintage” time periods explored in the two Scott installments from the 2010s. Instead, Romulus followed up directly from the events of the first Alien. Rather than continuing to look backwards, the Alien saga was now eager to introduce new recurring characters who could carry this series into the future. With that, details about Alien lore were put on the back burner. The era of Prometheus and Covenant is officially at an end.

The Alien Saga Has Prestige Again

It isn’t just the emphasis on newer material and fresh creative voices that marks a new dawn for the Alien saga. Earth and Romulus have scored significantly better critical marks than either Alien vs. Predator installment or the various 90s Alien sequels. Even Scott’s two 2010s extensions of this franchise, though they both have significant cult followings, didn’t garner the kind of immediate rave reviews as Alien: Earth and Alien: Romulus. A new era of Alien storytelling in terms of general reception has also dawned.

With a Romulus follow-up on the way, further Earth seasons a very real possibility, and a potential Alien vs. Predator redo stewing, the Alien saga has tons of upcoming projects on the horizon. With this deluge of further installments, the days of Prometheus and Covenant will fall further and further into the past. Whatever lingering story threads involving those Michael Fassbender androids and Engineers that once captivated Ridley Scott are not getting revisited in the future. This franchise has moved on to other stories that can captivate a fresh generation of fans.

Perhaps the greatest signal that Alien is entering a fresh chapter, though, is that Ridley Scott recently said he’s no longer going to be involved in this franchise in a creative capacity. With the original Alien director no longer set to helm further entries in this saga, the ground has well and truly shifted for the Alien universe. Those glowing Alien: Earth reviews are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how a new era, radically different from the Alien saga plans in the 2010s, is upon us all.

Alien: Earth begins airing episodes weekly on August 12 on FX and Hulu.

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Two major sci-fi franchises are in the middle of a massive resurgence, and there’s a chance they could once again crossover. As FX’s Alien: Earth approaches its August 12th release date with an impressive 91% Rotten Tomatoes score, one of the franchise’s highest since 1986’s Aliens and 1979’s Alien, creator and showrunner Noah Hawley teased the possibility of an Alien vs. Predator crossover. The two franchises, which respectively launched in 1979 and 1987, previously came together on screen in Alien vs. Predator (2004) and again in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), with fans long-hoping that the two worlds could once again clash.

“Yeah, I mean I think you’re projecting a kind of a master plan because of what Marvel has done and the reality that there is one person, Kevin Feige, who’s overseeing that entire story as one big story,” Hawley told ScreenRant when asked about the chances of a crossover. “Dan Trachtenberg, he’s on his own mission, and there’s a bit of a firewall between the feature side and the TV side,” he added, referring to the director’s two current Predator projects, Hulu’s animated Predator: Killer of Killers film that premiered in June and the Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi-starring movie Predator: Badlands, which is set to release in theaters in November 7, 2025.

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Hawley isn’t ready to commit to a new Alien vs. Predator mashup just yet, and any potential crossover will ultimately boil down to the three projects’ success. Hawley said they “have to prove ourselves on television” and then “maybe a larger conversation will start mostly not to coordinate, but probably to make sure we don’t duplicate because that begins to steal some of the energy from the franchise. But I’m excited to see that film.”

Set to debut on FX later this month, Alien: Earth marks the first TV series in the Alien franchise, which includes a total of nine movies, the most recent being 2024’s Alien: Romulus. The series serves as a prequel set two years before the events of the classic 1979 sci-fi horror movie Alien during a time when Earth is governed by five corporations – Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold – and cyborgs, synthetics, and humans co-exist. When a mysterious spaceship crash-lands on Earth and unleashes dangerous alien lifeforms, a group of tactical soldiers must fight for survival.

The series already stands to become one of the best entries into the Alien franchise and currently holds the franchise’s third-highest Rotten Tomatoes critics score at 91% based on 44 reviews. Critics have praised the series as being “bold and scary,” and say the show also manages to keep the franchise’s “cinematic grandeur intact while staking out a unique identity of its own.”

Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, and Adarsh Gourav. The series is scheduled to premiere with its first two episodes on FX and FX on Hulu on Tuesday, August 12th.

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The Alien franchise is tricky: at first glance, Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic is a simple thing: a claustrophobic battle with a nightmarish monster, in the most perilous environment: a highly concentrated dose of sci-fi/horror tropes. However, as time has passed (and Alien expanded into a massive franchise universe), it has become increasingly clear that Scott injected a great deal more complexity into his film than it initially seems: Dark ruminations on biology and birth; deeper sci-fi quandaries about artificial intelligence vs humanity; socio-political concerns about corporate corruption and class warfare, and genetic theories about mutation and evolution that evolve with the times. Well, modern-day television auteur Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo and Legion) is no stranger to tackling the headier concepts buried in pulpy genre fare. It’s not that surprising, then, that he takes bold and expansive creative strides forward with the concepts and themes of the Alien franchise, in its first TV series, Alien: Earth.

The series is set in 2120, two years before the USCSS Nostromo would discover and harvest the xenomorph lifeform on LV-426. For the first time in the Alien franchise, we get a look at Earth itself, a planet now ruled by three megacorporations and the trillionaires who run them. As fans know all too well, the Weyland-Yutani corporation is already one generation deep into the nefarious task of scouring the galaxy for the most dangerous lifeforms that can be engineered into bio-weapons. The company vessel USCSS Maginot is headed back to Earth with the most dangerous samples that have been collected over the decades-long voyage; due to mysterious circumstances, the ship gets sabotaged and the monsters get loose, causing the Maginot to crash-land. Unfortunately for Weyland-Yutani, the crash site is a skyscraper belonging to rival megacorporation Prodigy, which is owned by the youngest trillionaire in history, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). Boy has been taking leading strides in the race to achieve post-human evolution with the hybrid beings known as his “Lost Boys,” a group of terminally ill human children whose consciousnesses are transferred to adult android bodies. However, when Boy realizes what is on the Weyland-Yutani ship, alien bioweapons become his only immediate focus, and he sends his Lost Boys to retrieve them.

Alien: Earth manages to succeed where so many other television spinoffs of film franchises often fail: it finds a way to justify its long-form format. The series is smartly paced across its eight-episode run; slower stretches of character development and world-building segue smoothly into several key arcs of action-horror that feel on par with the feature films. FX doesn’t side-step the production demands: the set pieces, costumes, creatures, and overall visual effects feel cinematic when required, even if other scenes of dialogue or development use more budgeted means like blue screen backgrounds to save on budget. If nothing else, Alien: Earth is proof of concept that the franchise “works” in the TV format.

The cast and characters are more of a mixed bag. There are clear standouts in the lead ensemble: Sydney Chandler (daughter of actor Kyle Chandler) is something of a breakout surprise as Wendy, nailing the subtlety and nuance of a young girl relocated to an adult body, learning and evolving faster than anyone can predict. Timothy Olyphant (Justified, The Mandalorian) is also a scene-stealer as Kirsh, an elder synthetic who manages the Lost Boys squad. Olyphant is one of the better character actors working in TV, and the idiosyncratic manner in which he plays a machine man could be an entire show all its own. Samuel Blenkin is up there with Olyphant, tightrope walking a line between naive child and tech-bro mogul who’s a smiling, scraggly-haired sociopath. Rounding out the list of breakout actors is Babou Ceesay as Morrow, the cyborg security officer of the Maginot who takes up his own clandestine mission to recapture Weyland-Yutani’s lost assets. Other members of the cast (like the other members of the Lost Boys, or Boy’s team of scientists, or Yutani herself) don’t feel like crucial parts of the ensemble, and at times weigh down the otherwise tight pacing.

While it is, overall, a dark and thrilling immersion into the Alien universe, Earth isn’t immune to criticism. As usual, Hawley’s idiosyncrasies are a big part of his cinematic style (love it or hate it); Alien: Earth certainly reflects a lot of them. Spiraling camera shots; slow, quiet sequences of characters reflecting and/or contemplating, and those long musical montages that periodically re-establish where things now stand. And, of course, there are the sudden swerves from the expected storytelling path into the kind of detours that feel like they could derail a series in the hands of a lesser showrunner.

As with any long-form TV series that’s built off a movie, there are inevitable points of lag in Alien: Earth, or subplots that just don’t carry the same gravitas as others. Luckily, Hawley keeps the majority of the screen time where it needs to be focused: on the peril that is either already happening or about to strike. He is especially adept at creating compelling sci-fi concepts to explore. That includes Wendy, the Lost Boys, and their evolution from children into advanced androids, or the choice to make the new alien creatures characters in and of themselves, with a surprising amount of scenes dedicated to their… “point of view.” Those sequences are wonderfully weird and creepy, even if they ironically reduce the xenomorphs to being the least interesting feature of the show. Clearly, Hawley was disappointed that a franchise called Alien hadn’t done more with creature concepts. Finally, amidst the thrills and horror, there’s a good amount of mystery spread out across the series, resulting in some fun ways to play with the timeline, and/or drop twist reveals in later episodes.

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5 Reasons Alien Fans Should Be Excited For Alien: Earth

The two-episode premiere is going to give fans plenty of reason to invest in Alien: Earth, initially, but it will be the doom-heavy intrigue (more so than the characters) that will keep them coming back for the rest. After Alien: Romulus successfully rekindled the franchise’s theatrical viability, Alien: Earth is a strong indication that TV will be the final piece needed for the franchise to be firing on all platforms (movies, television, gaming, comics). It’s also another indication that FX-Hulu is on a good run of making great prestige-level genre TV a regular staple of its programming (see also: Shogun).

Alien: Earth will stream its two-episode premiere on August 12th. You can stream it on FX-Hulu.

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Noah Hawley’s Alien television series is already a hit, at least with critics. Set to premiere next week, Alien: Earth is currently sitting at a 90% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with thirty reviews. Critics are calling the series a “bold, character-driven” prequel, one that manages to be scary, fun, and thoughtful all at once. The FX series’ Rotten Tomatoes score is among the best for the series, coming in third after Alien and Aliens. The former, widely considered a cinema classic, has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In Comicbook.com’s review of Alien: Earth, critic Kofi Outlaw praised the series’ mix of horror and sci-fi intrigue, stating, “The two-episode premiere is going to give fans plenty of reason to invest in Alien: Earth, initially, but it will be the doom-heavy intrigue (more so than the characters) that will keep them coming back for the rest… Alien: Earth is a strong indication that TV will be the final piece needed for the franchise to be firing on all platforms (movies, television, gaming, comics).”

Alien: Earth did beat the most recent Alien movie by a wide margin, coming in 10 points over 2024’s Alien: Romulus, which secured a Fresh rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes after 400 reviews from critics. The film, which was a box office success, was cited as injecting some much-needed fresh blood into the long-running franchise. The R-rated Alien installment earned $105.3 million domestically at the box office and $245.5 million internationally for a worldwide haul of $350.8 million. The movie was both a prequel and a sequel, with Romulus taking place between the events of 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens. Alien: Earth, on the other hand, is a prequel to Alien, taking place two years before the events of that film.

Alien: Earth May Become One of the Best Entries in the Alien Canon

Alien: Earth is already ahead of the poorly received Alien 3, which has a Rotten rating of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Alien Resurrection, which has a rating of 55%. As for other prequels in the Alien franchise, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, both performed a bit better than Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, with Prometheus earning a Fresh rating of 73% and Alien: Covenant earning a 65% rating.

Created by renowned writer and director Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth takes place in the year 2120 and focuses on a time when corporations, including Weyland-Yutani, control Earth and have advanced synthetic and cyborg technology. The show focuses on a mysterious spaceship that crash-lands on Earth, unleashing dangerous alien lifeforms on the planet and putting a young woman named Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and a group of tactical soldiers in a fight for survival against the deadly threats.

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Alien: Earth is reportedly making some changes to the Alien canon, but critics don’t seem to mind. Hawley is known for pushing boundaries and tackling popular IP in a unique way, as seen in his FX Marvel series, Legion, and even the critically acclaimed Fargo. Now, with Alien: Earth, critics seem to think Hawley highlights the best parts of the long-running franchise, while still managing to expand upon the concepts that have been introduced over time and somehow still make them feel fresh.

Spanning eight episodes, Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Enzo Cilenti, and Dean Alexandrou. Alien: Earth will debut on FX on Tuesday, August 12th, it’ll also be available to stream on Hulu.

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For nearly 50 years, the Alien franchise has been a cornerstone of science-fiction horror, with its iconic Xenomorph standing as one of cinema’s most memorable creatures. Now, creator Noah Hawley is set to expand this universe with Alien: Earth, the first live-action television series for the franchise. The ambitious new story moves the action to our home world, detailing the catastrophic fallout after a Weyland-Yutani research vessel crashes and unleashes its terrifying cargo. However, the iconic Xenomorph will not be the only threat humanity faces, as the series is set to introduce multiple dangerous and predatory alien species. ComicBook recently sat down with the cast and crew of Alien: Earth during Comic-Con, where Hawley revealed that the classic monster is about to get some serious competition.

“That depends on what grosses you out the most,” Hawley said when asked if the xenomorphs are still the scariest creatures of Alien: Earth. “I think we’re giving them a run for their money, certainly. But their value is added. They are scary in the egg stage, the facehugger stage, and the chest burster stage. They got something for everyone, those xenomorphs.”

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The story of Alien: Earth takes place in the year 2120, a time when Earth is governed by five monolithic corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. When a Weyland-Yutani spaceship collides into Prodigy City, it unleashes a host of mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have imagined. This event thrusts the series’ protagonist, a new type of hybrid humanoid robot named Wendy (Sydney Chandler), directly into the chaos. The introduction of multiple alien threats fundamentally changes the survival-horror dynamic of the franchise, turning a contained outbreak into a potential planet-wide ecological disaster with various creatures vying for dominance.

“You bring these creatures into our natural environment,” Hwlaey told us. “You introduce an apex predator to another balanced ecosystem. I’m really interested to see how that plays out. I think you saw it in the last trailer, the iconic shot of the xenomorph in the cave system. You got a visceral response to it, to feel like now they’re here [on Earth].”

Everything We Know About Alien: Earth

Alien: Earth is poised to build a complex world that expands far beyond the immediate alien threat. The series introduces a society deeply stratified by technology, populated by humans, cyborgs, and synthetics. The central conflict is accelerated by the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), who unlocks a new form of immortality with hybrids, humanoid robots infused with human consciousness. This breakthrough establishes a fierce corporate rivalry that Hawley has compared to the historical battle for electricity between Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse, with every major power fighting to control the future of humanity. This corporate warfare means the alien outbreak is an opportunity for ruthless entities to seize power and technology. Hawley has emphasized that he wants to explore the moral horror of what humans do to each other, a theme present since the original films.

The series will be anchored by a diverse cast of characters navigating this deadly new landscape. At the center of Alien: Earth is Wendy, the first hybrid prototype, who shares a twisted father-daughter relationship with her creator. She is protected by a found family of fellow synthetics, including her mentor Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) and her brother-figure Wendell (David Rysdahl). On the human side, Alex Lawther plays CJ, an idealistic soldier who represents the “blue collar” ethos of the original films, a person caught within a system far beyond his control. Standing in for the infamous Weyland-Yutani corporation is Babou Ceesay’s Morrow, a complex cyborg with a long history and a conflicted loyalty to the company that saved him but also represents a cold, calculating corporate machine.

Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

What kind of new monster do you hope to see in Alien: Earth? Let us know in the comments!

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The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is at the center of the Alien franchise. Despite only being referred to as “the Company” in the first installment, it’s pulling the strings and forces the crew of the Nostromo to investigate signs of intelligent life. Of course, Ripley and Co. soon come face-to-face with a Facehugger that attaches itself to Kane and leads to the birth of a Xenomorph. Plenty of horrific events happen after that, but Weyland-Yutani never gives up its pursuit of information, as it’s in an arms race against other corporations back home to see who can guide humanity into the future first.

Alien: Earth, a new series coming to FX, will focus on the various companies fighting for control against Weyland-Yutani years before the events of Alien, including Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. However, the most interesting competitor is Prodigy, which is run by its eccentric CEO, Boy Kavalier. While it’s still a few more days before Kavalier’s big debut on August 12, ComicBook is ready to deliver an exclusive message from him that reveals how he really feels about Weyland-Yutani.

Kavalier is keeping his cards close to the vest, and it’s hard to blame him, as he’s a major player in a cutthroat business. He clearly hasn’t been paying attention to Alien: Earth‘s marketing, though, because it gives away Prodigy’s big breakthrough. The company is transferring human consciousness into synthetics, creating a new form of life. Kavalier doesn’t have to wait long to play with his new toys, either, because a ship crashes into Prodigy City and unleashes alien monsters.

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Wendy, the first hybrid, will rally the other synthetics to hunt down the aliens, but they’re going to bite off more than they can chew because a Xenomorph is ready to turn the whole mission upside down. It remains to be seen how much help their creator will be because he seems focused on capturing the beasts rather than protecting his flock.

In addition to Samuel Blenkin, who plays Kavalier, the cast of Alien: Earth includes Sydney Chandler as Wendy, Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Alex Lawther as CJ, Lily Newmark as Nibs, and Essie Davis as Dame Silva. The series was created by Noah Hawley and produced by Ridley Scott.

Alien: Earth‘s first two episodes release on FX and Hulu on August 12.

Are you excited to see Boy Kavalier in Alien: Earth? What do you think his company, Prodigy, is really up to? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Alien: Earth Video Teases How One New Character Connects to One of the Franchise’s Biggest Names (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Over the past 50 years, Alien fans have often only had one image in mind when it came to the threat of the terrifying franchise: the xenomorph. However, with each subsequent entry, a new type of threat became more clear, which is the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. The corporation might not be quite as intimidating as the xenomorph, but fans have witnessed in multiple films how they put profit over people, often resulting in protagonists paying the ultimate price. In that sense, actor Babou Ceesay finds himself in a tricky situation in the upcoming Alien: Earth, as he is the defacto face of Weyland-Yutani, though over the course of the series, fans will witness how he’s not just a mindless cog in a dangerous machine. Alien: Earth is set to premiere on FX on August 12th.

Complicating matters is that, within the world of the series, in an effort to push the limitations of humanity, corporations have developed synthetics, hybrids, and in the case of Ceesay’s Morrow: cyborgs.

“I don’t even want to give away his backstory … but he’s a cyborg, let’s just say that,” Ceesay shared during a press event on the set of Alien: Earth which ComicBook attended. “When I say cyborg, what do you think? This is interesting. People have been saying odd things to me when I tell them I’m a cyborg. So some people think that he’s all machine when they say ‘cyborg,’ but that’s not it. He’s human and flawed in a human way. Whereas you’ve got people who are synths, who are, I guess, AI brains with synthetic bodies and then you’ve got the hybrids that are both. So he’s a cyborg. The best way I can describe him, he’s like an iPhone 1 in a world of iPhone 20s. But what he does have is an unbelievable clarity in terms of what he wants to do and a determination. He’s ruthless for that reason.”

FX describes the series, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

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With Morrow not having as much to gain from the profits of Weyland-Yutani, there’s another reason he remains loyal to the corporation.

“He was abandoned because he had palsy. So his left arm, in particular, would do whatever it wanted. And so, as a child, it was very difficult for him to connect with people and Yutani saw that, took him in, gave him a cyborg arm and gave him a purpose,” Ceesay recalled. “There’s a line he says in it, he says, ‘Wouldn’t that be nice, to be all machine instead of what I am, the worst parts of a man?’ And I think he means his emotions because that’s what makes him conflicted. He wishes he had that cold, ‘I just need to get this done.'”

The nature of instellar travel, however, means that when Morrow goes into deep space, a lot more time passes on Earth, resulting in a bit of a disconnect between the company he left and the company he returns to.

“It’s been 65 years that he’s not been on the planet. So I think, originally, Yutani probably would have been a bit more of a warm center,” the actor confirmed. “Current Yutani, who he doesn’t know, he’s still having to catch up and go, ‘Oh, wait, no, it’s 65 years later.’ That Yutani is a bit more efficient, calculated, wants to do what they want to do. But look, they’re all like that as far as I’m concerned.”

He continued, “There’s subtle things like the world is hotter and society has been rearranged in a way he doesn’t understand. Everyone he’s ever known is dead, so that’s really difficult for him, to have to develop a newfound trust with, basically, strangers.”

Despite the legacy of the franchise, Alien: Earth marks the first live-action, longform TV series set within this world. Ceesay reflected on what it means to him to join the project.

“The pressure has been something. I was the first person to shoot in the entire series because of the actor strikes, things changed, I was available to work, so they put me on. You get to the set and it’s been built exactly like the movie,” Ceesay admitted. “You’re honored and excited, because I love, especially the original, so much. Just being in this world, it’s mind-blowing, and it doesn’t matter, I guess from the beginning of it, eight months, I still pinch myself. You see an egg open and your mind gets blown. I’m listening to Matthew McConaughey’s book, and he says, ‘Don’t be so impressed by all of it.’ So I have to keep reminding myself, ‘I’m here to do a job,’ so that’s been working.”

With how much time Ceesay has gotten to spend as the character, he’s gotten to inject more parts of himself into Morrow to add even more layers to him.

“It’s hard to admit to this, but he’s got a side to him that’s very … I don’t even know if ‘dark’ is the right thing,” the performer pointed out about how he’s embraced his own persona into Morrow. “I love the way he uses his mind and someone else’s — wow, this is coming out — someone else’s psychological weakness to get an advantage. I came over from Africa when I was 18 to England and I was stunned by the cultural shift, and I had to find ways to code switch, so very soon, emotionally, I just couldn’t connect to people for the first year. I just couldn’t understand, because I come from a communal place. So I had to try to find ways to adapt, and I’ve always looked at that period of my life as a bit of a sellout.”

He continued, “I’m back home in Africa now, so when I started working on Morrow and digging into the character, suddenly that moment came back to me of, ‘Oh, wow,’ so I would try to find a way to connect with someone to get what I wanted on the other side, as ruthless as that sounds … This is awful to say. I don’t need to do that now, I’ll just tell them what I think, but I look at Morrow and I feel, ‘Well, he’s come back 65 years later, he can’t just overcome all of the challenges in front of him. He looks for the weakest point and starts drilling at it.'”

“I admire it, actually, if I’m completely honest, as dark as that sounds. I admire … in a sick way, I look at what he’s doing and I go, ‘Maybe you have to love your character, but what he’s doing, there’s one particular thing he’s doing in this thing that’s…’ I don’t know how audiences are going to deal with that,” Ceesay confirmed. “I have a problem with it personally, in a way, but I love that I get to mess with that.”

Alien: Earth lands on FX on August 12th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or Instagram.

Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.

The post Alien: Earth’s Babou Ceesay Reflects on Representing Weyland-Yutani appeared first on ComicBook.com.

lien: Earth is about to bring the Alien franchise to TV screens and streaming, but it also seems like the series is about to make some big changes to the canon. There have been rumblings that Alien: Earth could be taking a controversial approach to the franchise lore ever since it was first announced; in fact, many eyebrows were raised when original Alien movie director Ridley Scott outright stated that the TV series would “never be as good as the first one.” Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley has made it his signature to take popular IPs and put very unique longform spins on them (see: Fargo, Legion), so getting a straightforward Alien sci-fi/horror story never really felt like it was in the cards.

However, the latest feature on Alien: Earth has some big red flags for those who consider themselves franchise lore purists. And the executives behind the show are getting out in front of it to let fans know that will be the case here.

New details about Alien: Earth reveal that the version of Earth we’ll be introduced to will be one that reflects a lot of the current problems we’re facing in real life. The environment will be getting even more severe, while wealth, power, and control will rest in the hands of a few megacorporations. Obviously, these are hot-button socio-political issues that Hawley is tapping into – and the showrunner is not subtle when discussing the correlation between real-world and sci-fi.

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7 Scenes From the Alien Movies I’ll Never Be Able to Unsee

“All I tried to do,” Hawley told Variety, “is think one or two steps ahead. 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.” 

The Franchise Lore About Synthetics Will Be Changed in a Major Way

The most controversial tweak to Alien lore Hawley is making is the place that androids known as “synthetics” occupy in the lore. Alien films have always posited that the future includes synthetics as aids to humanity on things like deep-space voyages. However, those synthetics were always in service (or had been in service) of the Weyland-Yutani corporation; Alien: Earth will be introducing rival megacorporations on Earth, and Noah Hawley is stepping into that pocket of lore to also introduce rival forms of post-human evolution. That will include Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), a “cyborg working to remake humanity in his image.” The entire series will be centered around Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who will be the first “hybrid,” i.e., a young girl’s consciousness placed into an older synthetic body.

Alien: Earth Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into the Timeline

The most explosive revelation of this latest feature about Alien: Earth is that the show “abandons plot elements introduced in Scott’s prequels and exists in parallel to [Alien:] Romulus.”

That’s a lot to decipher: Alien: Earth is set in the year 2120, two years before the events of the original Alien; Romulus picks up events in 2142, so the “parallel” nature of the projects is something fans should probably keep in mind while they watch. More importantly, the mention that this series could reject the events of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is going to stir a lot of debate. Those two films were infamously off-center in terms of being direct prequels, instead spiraling off into larger ideas of creatism and introducing elements like the “black goo” mutagen, which became the core root of the xenomorph species and all the horrific variations Scott and co. have since introduced. There’s a lot of room for Hawley to use a story about xenomorphs coming to Earth to easily retcon the species’ origin, while ignoring any lore about the Engineer race and that crashed ship on LV-426, to refocus on the Weyland-Yutani corporation secretly looking for any and every new source of xenomorph DNA in the cosmos, after first encountering them on Earth in Hawley’s series.

“There’s surprisingly little mythology across seven movies,” Hawley said, teasing his changes. “It was great to not have to jerry-rig a mythology into what’s existing, but to just start again.”

At the very least, it sounds like Alien fans are in for more disjointed mythology – which they are sure to love.

“Everything doesn’t have to fit together the way you expect from Marvel,” FX Entertainment president Gina Balian stated. “Fans don’t expect that in this universe. It doesn’t have the same pressure.” 

We’ll see about that when Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

The post Alien: Earth Is About to Mess With Franchise Canon in Ways That Will Divide Fans appeared first on ComicBook.com.

For decades, Alien fans have known about the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and how they are just as interested in pushing technology forward as they are in making any human sacrifices necessary to turn a profit. The upcoming TV series Alien: Earth marks the first longform adventure for the franchise that takes place on Earth, which includes the reveal that Weyland-Yutani is only one major player in the tech game. A significant faction of the upcoming series is Prodigy Corporation, which is just as passionate to push tech to new heights, though, like Weyland-Yutani, they also aren’t afraid to make some sacrifices along the way. Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

FX describes the series, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

Playing key members in Prodigy Corporation are Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, Essie Davis as Dame Sylvia, Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins, and David Rysdahl as Arthur Sylvia.

ComicBook caught up with the cast on the set of the series in Bangkok to talk the goals of Prodigy, fitting into the Alien universe, and more.

ComicBook: This Alien franchise, it’s been around for a little while. Made a couple movies, video games, comic books, all that stuff. Before you got involved in this project, what was your connection to the franchise?

Samuel Blenkin: What I will say is that the first film had such a massive impact on me. Well, I feel like it had an impact on everyone because it was … I’d never seen anything like it before. I’d never seen that level of — that imagination stuff. I’ve got a really long connection to sci-fi, so I remember seeing Alien when I was probably a little bit too young, but I loved it. Before that, I was an avid reader of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that aspect of sci-fi, and I really, really loved it. I believe that sci-fi has something very articulate to say about our society and where we’re heading, but when it’s done really well … that film is amazing. So, yes, it lived in my imagination.

Essie Davis: I didn’t watch these films originally in the cinema. My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, showed me Alien, the first Alien, when we were going out and it blew me away, and then we went on and watched all the rest. I particularly loved the first two films. Randomly, two days before I was sent an audition, we were watching Aliens again, because my daughter was studying it in English, and we were watching it together so she could write an essay on it. Then the script came, and then my alarm went off.

David Rysdahl: I was definitely a fan. I watched it for the first time when I was 12. My cousin, who’s older, took me into the basement with a bunch of the younger cousins and squealed in delight as we all squealed in terror. Then, later, as I got into filmmaking, I started watching them as a filmmaker and just realized how brilliant the movies are. I’m especially a fan — I think all of it’s really interesting, but the first two are really my favorites. I love the humanity in those, too. That first movie feels like they’re just truckers in space, and the idea that they’re just normal people who are dealt this crazy situation, and I love that.

It’s clear that there’s a deep emotional connection you have with it, just as a movie fan, and the themes that it explored. What did it mean to you to enter this world, knowing that, just as a viewer, you had so much connection and reverence for the concept, and knowing that now your daughter is studying it and analyzing it? What has this process been like for you?

Davis: Well, it’s been super exciting, I have to say. Particularly, walking onto set, the first time we saw the alien eggs, it was a little bit like, “Wow!” They were so much bigger than I thought they’d be, and they’ve got amazing, textured skin. I was like, “This thing’s going to open!” I also think they have filmed some sequences of that happening, and the cheers of joy from the camera department, as props smear on some slime, and they open it up, it’s like a crew of fans. It’s hilarious.

Prior to getting involved, what did the series represent to you? Because to some people, it’s just horror movies. Some people, it’s the bigger sci-fi, existential concepts.

Blenkin: This is going to sound strange, but I’ve been thinking a lot recently about interpretation and about the way that interpretation works in entertainment and how sometimes it’s the experience that stays with you. The best art, for me, is not the work that invites explanation or invites interpretation. It’s the work that is just so well told and so vivid that the experience lives with you. That’s all I’m looking for, all I’m asking for from art in general.

What it means to me is the experience of me watching that film and the impact that it had on me. Obviously, looking back now, there are themes there about, basically, the unknown and about how terrifying that is and about knowledge and encountering the unknown and encountering things that aren’t familiar to us, which are themes that we explore in our series and expand upon in a way.

You explaining that reminds me that clip of David Lynch on a talk show where someone asks him to expand on the meaning of Eraserhead and he says, “No.”

Blenkin: It’s different for every viewer, and I genuinely think that’s not the interesting thing about … the explanation is not the interesting thing. It’s about experience for me, personally.

What surprised you about the concept of this show, given what you know and what audiences know about the franchise?

Adrian Edmondson: I think there’s an awful lot of bad sci-fi in the world. I’m not a blanket sci-fi fan. I loved the first Alien, I loved Silent Running, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s about it. Then I read this script, and I thought that is a very cool conceit. I love that idea. Because of our obsession with Peter Pan, the idea of building, taking children away from their home, because Peter Pan is not a good character. Everyone thinks, Peter Pan, he’s a f-cker. He steals children and he takes them away and doesn’t want them to come back, and that’s what this is, dressed up as a business. Weird, eh? I thought that’s worth pursuing.

Davis: Well, I think if I told you, I would be giving something terrible away, so I can’t tell you what my biggest surprise was, but I can tell you that, as a series, you don’t need to have seen the film, because it really does stand alone, but it is very much inspired by them — particularly those first two. It’s set in a 1970s analogue sci-fi world, as opposed to this world. It’s definitely a potential future, but it’s still got plastic buttons and things you have to press to make things happen.

Rysdahl: I think [creator] Noah [Hawley] has a track record of taking iconic movies and breaking them down to their DNA and seeing it through his new lens, and that’s what was impressive with these scripts, in that this feels both like an homage and part of the same universe, but it feels fresh, and it feels like there’s this hybrid, there’s these sciences. It feels like it’s talking about the same conversation about AI that we’re talking about.

We’re at a turning point in human history right now, as humans, and this show is dealing with that through a sci-fi lens. I think Noah’s love of people and his interesting characters, there are iconic characters in this, the same way they’re iconic characters in his Fargo shows. I think if it wasn’t Noah Hawley, I would be more nervous, but I’m like, “Oh, he’s done it. And done it well.”

Blenkin: Just how Noah has managed to honor and stay true to this franchise. It is an Alien franchise and that carries certain expectations, which I think he has honored in such a beautiful way. Well, beautiful is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. In the most horrifying way.

Also, just like all of Noah’s projects, he’s created a cast of really fascinating, interesting characters who are very complex. He’s telling a complex story that is going to go in directions I don’t think any of the audience might see coming, necessarily. Aside from the fact that, maybe in all of the Alien films there is, you know, there’s always a big, shiny black monster. Things are going to go wrong. I think that’s pretty obvious from the outset with our series, but just how he’s taken that franchise, honored it, but also made it his own. I love Noah’s way of storytelling, which is just fascinating and strange and weird characters, putting them in weird, fascinating situations and taking that as far as we can possibly go.

What can you say about your character?

Edmondson: I play Atom. You probably know that, in the future, the idea is that, probably quite a good idea, that — well, an accurate idea, maybe not good — the world will be several multinational corporations and, well, we basically own it. Prodigy owns one of them, and Prodigy is Boy Cavalier’s company, and I’m his absolute right-hand man. To an obsessive point, he’s a vicious enforcer. He understands that Boy is a genius and that he holds the power to make him a lot of money, and therefore does everything he can to crush any opposition or any product.

This isn’t in the script, but when I think of “Atom,” I think of “Atomizer.” He’s a man who atomizes problems. Sometimes quite literally.

Some people might say Prodigy could be a villain–

Edmondson: I’m not a villain.

Right, that’s what I was going to say, is that “villain” is just a matter of perspective.

Edmondson: We’re obsessed with Peter Pan, and we have [productions] of Peter Pan every year. I’ve been in one, I’ve played in it, and there’s a convention that the same actor plays the father in the nursery and then plays Captain Hook, and this kind of duality is what Atom is. He is a kind of father figure but he has the propensity to be a monster, and that’s also what the entire series is about. What is a monster?

Some people might call Atom vicious, but it sounds like a vicious protectiveness.

Edmondson: All sci-fi is about whatever period is written. This one is about now, and we do have problems. Well, we have a conversation going on about the use of AI, which in this is translated into … It’s a Pandora’s box, isn’t it? You can’t close it. It’s translated into the idea of sense and humans in human consciousness in robot bodies and stuff like that.

Then we have to work out, is that good or a bad thing? Everyone agrees hip operations are a boon. That’s good, but when you start messing and putting a human consciousness in another body, is that good for the planet or bad for the planet? Is that the monster? Or is the conceivable alien, is that really a monster? I’m sure the alien doesn’t think he’s a monster. We know from the first Alien film that aliens don’t come from loving families. They grow out of eggs and have to find a human being to come out. I’m sure they don’t think of themselves as monsters.

Davis: It’s a very ethical dilemma kind of world. What is right and wrong? Who is good and bad? Some things are quite obvious, but my character certainly would be a tightrope between her own status, her own position as the top female scientist in biology, and reaching that point and maintaining that point, while having to make compromises, potentially about her ethics, in order to maintain not only that position, but to also maintain care of what she has been doing.

Rysdahl: I think he’s an idealist. He really believes that it’s going to help society, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think he’s in a bubble, and that bubble starts to pop a little bit as he progresses. He’s not just going for a paycheck. He’s a believer.

Do you think your character has taken that responsibility upon herself to do good within the world of Prodigy, and maybe some of the dubious things they might be doing?

Davis: I definitely think that that is her intention. I don’t know whether she fulfills it, but her intention is to hold on to humanity, and the best, most wonderful parts of humanity. The scientific and the creative and the artistic and the potential of human invention.

What was it about your character that you connected with?

Rysdahl: I started with this AI conversation, all the fears and hopes I have about AI as a human. I read a lot about AI, and I’m like, “Oh, it can help change the world and help people and help systems, but also it can be a tool to dehumanize people, to gain control, to unleash corporate greed.”

So for me, that’s where I started, and then I slowly started taking him into the — I was a chemistry major in college, and so I had an old professor who was this lover of science, a lover of ideas, and an absent-minded guy. That’s where I started with him, and he gets in over his head. It’s easy for me, as David, to empathize with him and just to flow with what happens to him and the mistakes that happen.

What did you personally take away from playing this character?

Edmondson: I don’t think you get that until the end of a run, until you see it. Still in the middle of it. I really enjoy the sense of power, because I don’t do that in my normal life. I enjoy the slight fear that he engenders in some people. And I find it surprisingly easy to do.

Rysdahl: It was very easy for me to empathize with Arthur. Also, when I have anxiety, which I do, about the future and these megalomaniacs controlling this amazing technology, it’s rare that you get to put all of that into a creative endeavor. I feel like I can just put all of that into Arthur. The conversations we’re having, Samuel Blenkin — who plays Boy Kavalier — and I, I’ve had so many conversations about all of this, and so it’s just lovely when you get to make something that also you care about in real life, so it has impacted me. It’s also given me a vessel and a conduit to relieve some of my anxiety.

Do you look forward to playing a character like Boy Kavalier because of what you can relate to about him or the ways he’s different from you and challenges you as a performer?

Blenkin: Always the challenge. This is really pushing me out of my comfort zone. I have a tendency to end up playing strange characters, maybe broken characters. Characters that are outsiders. That’s the thing that compels me about acting, is the challenge that you’re talking about. And Boy is … I hope that Boy’s a challenge for me. I hope I don’t have an ego that’s quite as big as his. I definitely don’t have the brainpower that he has, and I’m definitely not verging on sociopathic in the same way that he might be. I’m relishing the challenge of playing somebody who is so different from me.

The franchise is known for people running from a big monster, so even though you’re part of Prodigy, do you still get to do some action-orientated stuff?

Blenkin: I can’t say anything about that, but what I can say is that with the discussions with Noah that I’ve had, we’ve always talked about Boy as somebody who is much more of an artist than a scientist. He has the breadth of knowledge that you need in order to … the depth of knowledge, but also thinking and metaphysical ability. He also has this creative thing which allows him to come at situations from a different angle, redefine what the question is, maybe even redesign the question, which then allows him to come at something from an angle that nobody expected. That maybe goes a little bit towards explaining this meteoric rise that he’s had with his company. Definitely the youngest company by far and now he owns a bit of the planet and he’s barely 20.

Rysdahl: All I can say is when a spaceship full of aliens crashes into the planet, nobody’s safe.

Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or Instagram.

Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.

The post Alien: Earth Stars Unpack the Complicated Objectives of Prodigy Corporation appeared first on ComicBook.com.

In the original Alien, the crew of the Nostromo was entirely over their heads in attempting to not only survive, but also hopefully neutralize the threat of the frightening xenomorph. What audiences witnessed in Aliens, though, was a highly trained group of Colonial Marines arriving much more prepared for a terrifying situation, only for them to also see massive casualties. In the upcoming Alien: Earth, a task force from the Prodigy Corporation hopes to contain the threat of monstrous beasts who crashland on Earth, but whether having a homefield advantage could lead to a more successful mission is yet to be seen. Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

FX describes the series, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

Starring as Prodigy’s response team are Alex Lawther as Hermit, Diêm Camille as Siberian, and Moe Bar-El as Rashidi.

ComicBook caught up with the stars of Alien: Earth on the set of the series to talk the new adventure, how it’ll surprise longtime fans, and more.

ComicBook: What did Alien mean to you before this opportunity came about? What was your connection with the franchise?

Alex Lawther: I had definitely seen the first film. I was a big fan of Ridley Scott’s work. I’d done a film with Ridley a few years ago called The Last Jewel. I had also concurrently been a fan of Noah’s work, Noah Hawley, our showrunner. The meeting place of the two seemed really exciting.

Diêm Camille: I’m a fan. I’m not like, “Oh, I know what they said in this scene.” I will let the superfans do that, but I’m a fan of storytelling and I’m a fan of the franchise and how they made horror films that I could watch, because I usually wasn’t a fan of horror films until I watched Alien. It was just so inspiring to see how they made a near-future story that I could connect to somehow, even though it seems so unrealistic. There are so many parts and so much core and heart that is relatable. And Sigourney Weaver is always relatable. She’s the Queen Bee.

Moe Bar-El: I saw the first Alien when I lived in Iran and I didn’t really speak English properly, so I didn’t quite understand that. I just remember the visuals of the Alien coming out of the stomach and everything. Those images stuck with me. Then when I got the job, I rewatched Alien 1 because I don’t like to get too lost in the universe of whatever it was before. I rewatched Alien 1, loved it, and I was like, “I’ve seen enough to know the direction of the show and how it works,” because we’re kind of keeping the ’70s vibe for this series. I just ended it there. I can’t wait to watch Prometheus, especially because I’m a huge [Michael] Fassbender fan, as well. But just Alien 1, for me, and I’m sticking to that for now.

So with what you knew of Alien and not even knowing the story necessarily because of when you first saw it, do you feel like that impacted you at all with how you approached your character and the way you viewed it as a kid of not even necessarily knowing what they were saying, but just what they were conveying through their body language and facial expression?

Bar-El: I think yes and no. I think yes, because, again, it was a film that came out in the ’70s and because Noah made it specific that we want to keep that ’70s vibe through costume, through hair, which is why I have this George Michael hair going on at the moment. They dyed my hair brown and gave the highlights and whatnot, I think just to keep the vibes of the show, but for my character specifically, no. I approached it just fresh. Like, who is Rashidi, where’s he come from, what’s his background? I kept the original Alien completely separate to my character-building.

Based on that legacy, what surprised you most about Alien: Earth, once you dove in and got the scripts?

Camille: I was very — not surprised, but very excited about how much the script is a page-turner. I knew that Noah was a great writer, obviously. We all know that. But when I read it, I was like, “He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever met.” Like, “What is this? How does he do this?” Because he just knows all the shifts, all the twists and the turns, and the way he writes is super exciting. I could see the images unfolding. I know that viewers can totally expect tear-jerking visuals. This is going to be insane.

But also, because there are themes about family, about love, loyalty, friendship, that I really, really relate to and love about the scripts. That is going to ground the show, as well. So as soon as it gets like, ‘Oh, my God,’ it sucks you back in to the reality of it.

Lawther: I find sci-fi really thrilling because you get to explore potentialities, you get to explore things, take an idea and say, “Well, what might this look like in the future? Or what would happen if the trajectory we’re currently on went this way instead?” So I think sci-fi is like a really … It’s quite a philosophical realm of genre. Quite a philosophical genre.

And I think this show, coming at it from my own perspective as Hermit, is trying to explore that quite-blurred line between something alien and something human and where one ends and the other begins, and I find that question really exciting and tricky.

Once you got the part, did you go back and dive into the lore, or knowing that this was so much its own thing, did you try and just stick with what the material was?

Lawther: I revisited some of the films, just because you do whatever you can before you start working, but then actually since being here, it’s been as useful watching Noah’s previous work and getting an understanding of his rhythms and cadences as a writer as anything else, because what’s so thrilling about Noah is his imagination. Not just what he’s written on the page, but then when he’s on set as a director, he’s so playful and unusual and detailed. It’s been about embracing that, really.

There’s a theme of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan in the show itself, and that feels replicated in how the cast comes from so many different corners of the world to land in Bangkok. What has it been like collaborating with your co-stars? Were you able to pick up the dynamics immediately or was there, maybe not a learning curve, but preparation off set to get in that mindset?

Lawther: We actually did have a lot of prep time, which was doing stunts and doing hand-to-hand combat. So that physical work was really useful. I think they brought us here early also to just acclimate or acclimatize to the weather here and the time difference and us all coming from different parts of the globe. Essentially, a big part of the cast, we’re of a similar age, which has been lovely, so we’re a bunch of like late 20-somethings in Bangkok.

I think most of us, it’s our first time here, and we’ve just been welcomed, really open-armed by the Thai crew and the Thai team. It’s been quite an easy beginning to this adventure, yeah.

And you play Wendy’s brother in the series, did you have a different type of preparation with Sydney to form that bond?

Lawther: I think we share a certain quality in wanting to explore all different corners. We have a real curiosity, the both of us, of finding out what that relationship looks like specifically and what that past was that we shared, so many weekends spent just hanging out, really, and just chatting and sharing ideas and trying to find a shared language.

What was it about the character that, you read it and you immediately connected with? And then, also, what was the part of the character that seemed entirely unlike you?

Bar-El: I think what I could relate to was we both like to go to the gym quite a lot, as you will see in Episode 1. Also, he’s a very strong-willed character in a sense that he will go for what he wants and what he believes in, but then, at the same time, he’s following orders. He’s not going to make his own decisions and go the wrong way and be the villain. I think that was definitely relatable because I think me, personally, I have a very direct vision of what I want and how I’m going to get it and what I’m going to do to get it. I think Rashidi, in that sense, is the same way. He has a mission, he has orders, and he will do what he can to complete the mission and get him and his team back to safety alive.

What I couldn’t relate with was the military training. I went to a shooting range a couple of weeks ago, and I thought, “I’m going to be good at it because we had a couple of weeks of military training.” But the second I started shooting a gun, I was like, me and Rashidi have nothing in common in that sense, because he’s a badass, he knows how to handle a gun, and Moe has no idea how to hold a gun or shoot a gun.

Lawther: I really liked, in Hermit, in a world that seems otherwise non-human, maybe, and that includes the reactions for the … There’s characters in the show that operate in a very rational, unemotional way, and that’s their MO, their modus operandi. And Hermit, I feel, runs contrary to that and is led by deep feelings about what it is to be a human being and about community and about care, and I really loved that. There’s juxtaposition in a story called “Aliens,” and he’s a medic and he’s always trying to search for something that is human, and that’s his quest, I suppose.

And then the most foreign thing, was… He’s also a medic in a military environment, so that very tough, uncompassionate world was very foreign to me, and it was interesting trying to find the characters, that quite-soft character’s place within that quite hard framework.

Camille: I really love characters that get to be vulnerable, because I usually don’t get to be vulnerable in my roles. They’re usually very stereotypical or, just confirming tropes and stuff. The past year, I’ve picked up roles that are a lot more humanizing, finally, and offered more roles that are humanizing. This role is definitely a full human, and what really lured me in was the fact that she’s so strong, she’s so badass, and cool, but she’s also superstitious. Where does that superstition come from? Because she has people she loves that she’s trying to protect, and the fact that she has a thing with Hermit, where it’s like, he annoys her because people die around him, and she doesn’t want to die. She also doesn’t want the people she loves that could die, and he’s also bad at his job, in her opinion.

In her mind, when you apply yourself, you need to say that, you need to be focused and ready at all times as a Marine. Because she’s an E4 Corporal, she’s also responsible for other Marines. So it bugs her that people are not focused. It’s really cool to have a character that feels responsible, but is super cheeky at the same time, and really playful, brave, but at the same time, there are moments in the script where I realize, “Oh, she’s also a bit lonely.” That’s something that really appealed to me, because I was like, “There it is, the vulnerability that I’m looking for,” because I wouldn’t want to play someone who’s tough all the time, because no one is.

Once you actually got on set and got to bring those more vulnerable scenes to life, was it a reaction on your part of, “That’s right, this acting thing is really hard, or was it opening up the floodgates of, “I finally get to do all this stuff I haven’t gotten to do,”?

Camille: I actually had one of my favorite moments the first week of military training. Rob Inch, our stunt coordinator, showed me the previz of the stunts that I was going to do, and it was the biggest stunt. I was like, “Okay, good start.” Up until then, I had tried to stay calm about me getting the role, because I was like, you hear about the stories, people on set being replaced or recasted, whatever. So I was like, “Stay calm, stay calm, girl.” Then when I saw the previz, I started crying. He was like, “Wait, is she okay?” Like, “You’re going to do this,” and I was like, “I’m crying because I suddenly realized what I’m doing. I’m doing Alien.” It was such a beautiful moment. I feel like the way Noah has handpicked the cast and the Thai crew and the OG crew, is a testament of the confidence in him. And that’s the driving force of everything he does and writes.

Because we all came in with such gratitude and kindness and hard work, so when I’m gunning up all the time — every day, I’m with a gun. The gun doesn’t make me feel safe, but the people around me do. I think someone asked me, “Did you trust the people who had to do the stunts with you and everything?” I trust everyone because they’re here for a reason. That immediately makes me trust them.

Is there a specific episode that you are very excited about, without giving away details about what’s in it? But when the show premieres and people love Episode 3, is it going to be, “Wait for Episode 6,”?

Bar-El: It’s definitely one of those shows where you see the earlier episodes and you’re like, “Whoa.” And then when the further episodes come in, I know they’re still rewriting some stuff as well, so it’s not 100% confirmed, but the action gets a lot bigger as it goes on. I think the Alien fans will see a lot more of what they want to see, without giving too much away, but I think the Alien fans are getting what they want, for sure. They’re getting their money’s worth.

Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or Instagram.

Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.

The post Alien: Earth Stars Talk Being the First Line of Defense Against the Iconic Xenomorph appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Having Xenomorphs on Earth before Alien sounds like a big mistake. Knowing how tough and resilient the beasts can be, coupled with the ferocious speed with which they spread, is a nightmare scenario. That’s exactly the premise of Alien: Earth, coming to screens in August, and it’s both the show’s biggest challenge and its most exciting selling point. After all, several Alien movies have threatened the grim reality of a future where Xenomorphs escaped to Earth. We’ve also seen it before, no matter how many people want to forget it.

In Alien Vs. Predator, we see the Yautja seeding Xenomorphs in the temples and pyramids that made up early civilizations. That film also demonstrated that even the Yautja are easily overwhelmed by the monsters, resorting to their self-destruct device to wipe out the infestation. The mainline Alien movies established that the only way to defeat the Xenomorph if you’re a human is with a desperate struggle to force it into the airlock or trap it inside industrial equipment. It’s the desperation that stems from the basics of survival and the fear that they would quickly overtake the Earth if they made it to the planet.

It’s a chilling thought, but it’s not the only reason Alien fans should be excited for the upcoming series. We’ve seen plenty of additions, detours, and retcons in the franchise to this point, and more changes might well be the shot in the arm the Alien series needs. Before we get into why it’s so exciting, here’s the trailer:

1) The Alien Franchise’s Fear Factor is Intact

Despite the setting being on the planet Earth and not in the coldness of space, the series still leans on the same claustrophobic fear as the franchise’s most successful films. The desperate need to keep the beast locked away or destroy it before it can escape into the wild appears to be still be intact, and it’s heightened because you can’t just blow it out of the airlock.

It’s a situation similar to what happens in John Carpenter’s The Thing, though the Xenomorphs are far more aggressive than the “thing” that took down Kurt Russell’s entire team. None of these creatures can escape, or else Earth is doomed, so how will the team in the film decide to handle the situation? It’s a good spot to be with plenty of episodes to watch it play out.

2) Noah Hawley Has A Strong Track Record

Another reason to be confident in Alien: Earth is creator and showrunner Noah Hawley. The Fargo creator and Emmy Award winner has had his hands in plenty of different franchises over the years, including the trippy Marvel series Legion for FX. The series follows the mentally unwell son of Charles Xavier as he struggles with his mental health and the influence of the Shadow King. Hawley took elements from the source material, like Legion, Professor X, and Shadow King, and melded them into an original story that stood apart from any of the larger X-Men projects at the time. There was never any confusion over David Haller showing up in the next X-Men blockbuster.

But if you’ve slept on Fargo or felt a need to be partial to the original Coen Brothers’ film, give it a chance. Across five seasons, Hawley and company have created a great crime story full of memorable personalities each time out. Each season is a self-contained entry that shares themes and tone, but covers a new story. He’s proven he can blend great writing with reverence for the past in both series, which should give plenty of confidence heading into the premiere of Alien: Earth.

3) Alien: Earth Brings Fresh Ideas

It also sounds like the new series is going in some interesting new directions; particularly how the Xenomorph will interact with other aliens that have also escaped within the crashed ship. Are these other creatures just as deadly? Were they creations from experiments similar to the Xenomorph? These are important details that will hopefully get addressed somehow in the first season, maybe in a passing mention or through the experiences of the surviving crew on the crashed ship housing the creature samples.

Hawley and his team have also revealed the introduction of a new type of synthetic being, led by Sydney Chandler’s Wendy, who is the first robotic hybrid with the body of a bot and the consciousness of a human. Specifically, Wendy was a child who had her mind placed in the hybrid body.

Read Next

Everything We Know About Alien: Earth (And How It Connects to the Alien Movies)

4) Alien: Earth Can Answer Other Questions

Apart from any tweaks and additions to the overarching Xenomorph lore, some interesting possibilities could answer lingering questions from past entries. One such possibility is establishing an answer behind where the corporations here on Earth discovered the existence of the Xenomorphs. Is the crashed ship the source? Is this why the original Alien showed that Weyland-Yutani is aware of the creature and the company is willing to use the crew of the Nostromo as expendable couriers to get the creature back to Earth?

Hawley has confirmed the series will draw more from the original film than Scott’s prequels. That means we shouldn’t expect to see more of David and his work connected to creating the original Xenomorphs. But there’s also the question of whether Prometheus and David’s actions have even been transmitted to Earth after the expedition disappeared. David was in the driver’s seat at the end of Alien: Covenant, so it’s safe to say that he also controls the routes of communication. Anything to add to the world-building in the original Alien and its sequels is welcome, though.

5) The Alien Franchise Has Always Embraced Change

From the start, each addition to the Alien franchise made tweaks and added background to the Xenomorph and its origins. It started with the introduction of the Xenomorph Queen in James Cameron’s sequel, altering the initial idea that the creature reproduced through cocoons to create more eggs. This expanded in later movies with the introduction of hybrids with humans that were introduced in Alien: Resurrection and later expanded in Alien: Romulus. It is also hard to ignore the upending of the original origins of the Xenomorphs and Engineers in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

The entire series has come quite a long way from an egg on a derelict ship. There are different castes of Xenomorph, including warriors from Aliens that protect the aforementioned Queen. Alien 3 also introduced the idea of a Xenomorph newborn reflecting the attributes of its host, with a dog helping the monster return to life by the end of the film. There should be no fears here.

The post 5 Reasons Alien Fans Should Be Excited For Alien: Earth appeared first on ComicBook.com.

When audiences think of the original Alien, they often think about how the crew of the Nostromo was in over their heads from the beginning, as they were commercial haulers in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the upcoming Alien: Earth from Noah Hawley, the first TV series set in the franchise, characters are similarly in over their heads, given that the series introduces the concept of “hybrids,” which are the result of human consciousnesses being transferred into synthetic bodies. One catch, however, is that this group of hybrids has the minds of young children, who not only aren’t entirely aware of their own bodily autonomy, but also have mixed reactions to confronting the franchise’s otherworldly xenomorphs. Alien: Earth heads to FX on August 12th.

FX describes the series, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

In addition to Chandler playing Wendy, Kit Young plays Tootles, Jonathan Ajayi plays Smee, Erana James plays Curly, Lily Newmark plays Nibs, and Adarsh Gourav plays Slightly.

ComicBook caught up with the stars on the set of Alien: Earth to talk their connection to the franchise, what to expect from the series, and more.

ComicBook: Before getting this opportunity, what was your connection to the franchise? And then once you read what the story was actually going to be, what was the most surprising about the story?

Sydney Chandler: I’m a massive fan of the movie. It’s the first film I watched so many times. I used to have nightmares of xenomorphs as a kid, so it’s been really fun actually acting with one now, it’s terrifying. Reading the script, I was so excited just hearing that it was Noah taking this on. Because that movie stands alone, it will always stand alone, and I felt the same with Fargo. He was able to take the essence of Fargo and make something completely original but honor it, and that’s my hope that this project does the same.

And then, I mean, a big surprise is the kids. The kid aspect … we’re playing children in our own bodies, and the experience of preparing for a role like this makes you dive into your own inner child. It’s been really healing and really beautiful and empowering to do, and to take on a character who I look up to is really, really fun. It’s taught me a lot. She’s given me a lot of bravery and strength throughout this process. I almost feel like she’s been holding my hand, which is a weird feeling … She’s been my roommate for a long time now.

Kit Young: The franchise has existed longer than I have, so I’d say I was late to the party, right? But also, I didn’t think I really, really watched them and engaged with them until I was in my mid-teens, which was probably a good thing. I remember watching Aliens first. I think the action movie intro made more sense to me than a true horror, but then I think I was probably confused, because I definitely had missed something.

I was the perfect age for when Prometheus came out, and seeing also how different some of those movies can be. The franchise is so large. What, it’s on its 99th movie now? But I’ve loved them. I’ve really, really loved them, but I’ve not ever really seen myself in it. I’ve been very relieved to be watching it and not running down the corridors trying to survive, but I guess it’s my turn. I’ve got an attachment to it that means that I can look at it and be excited about it, but I’m not so consumed by my fear that I can’t do my job.

Jonathan Ajayi: Growing up, I grew up in a time where it was Alien vs. Predator, those movies. So that’s like, oh man, you’re running around a playground as a ten-year-old, pretending to be Predator, pretending to be a xeno, and fighting each other. That was as far as it went for me. Getting this offer through, I was like, “Wait, no way,” because it’s such a massive cultural part of cinema, it’s one of those films I assumed I’d watched all my life.

I really sat down to watch it. I was like, “No way.” First of all, the notion of not saving the cat, which is like the writing of the book, comes from that, I imagine. But not just seeing how amazing those effects are, and actually finding out actors I’d never heard of before, like Yaphet Kotto, who is so brilliant. I think the thing that really impressed me about the Alien movies is, in the first instant, really, what they were able to achieve by the time they made it, and how practical a lot of the visual effects were, and how grounded and understated those performances really, really were.

You’d assume that sci-fi, there’d be room for it, or that maybe the acting wouldn’t be such a high priority, but especially in that first film, those performances are wicked. Then going into the series, that really set a precedent and a benchmark for me, where I was like, “I don’t want to negate the humanity of the story for the spectacle of it.” What Alien does so brilliantly, the movie, and actually what is so brilliant working on this show with the cast that I’m working with, and the crew, is that we really are finding the marriage between the spectacle and the humanity, even those of us who aren’t native aliens.

Adarsh Gourav: I’ll be really honest with you, I haven’t watched a ton of sci-fi movies in my life. I was obviously aware of Alien and I was aware of how big a franchise it is, but I had not seen it. Probably I’d seen it when I was a child, but I had no memory of it. So when I was auditioning for it, I really had no reference. I was just trying to stay true to the sides that were given to me. Once I got the part, I went back and I watched the film and I was like, “Holy sh-t. This is what I’m going to be part of? That’s insane.”

Now that I am on a sci-fi set, I feel like every day is like being in Disneyland for me, because it’s so crazy to be actually seeing these sets being created in front of you. I feel like, unlike a lot of films that have relied a lot on CGI and VFX, I’m sure they’re using a lot of VFX in this as well, there’s also so much of it that’s actually being created, which is so amazing because you can actually touch it and feel it and feel the texture of things. It helps you so much. Because when you’re in a spaceship, you don’t have to imagine that it’s a spaceship. You actually see the spaceship. So you bring all people together and have the same perspective. I feel like when you can touch things and when things become tangible, it really affects you deeply.

Erana James: I, admittedly, hadn’t seen the films. I was born in 1999, if that lets me off in any way. When I saw the audition for this, it was when I first entered into the Alien universe and watched the films. I would like to be able to sit here and say that I was a big fan beforehand.

What was that experience like for you after actually getting the gig, knowing what the story was, and then going back and being like, “There’s a lot of people running around and screaming in spaceships for two hours,”?

James: Look, when I met with Noah, and I think he’s talked about this, he said that what he’s trying to do is make something that is reminiscent of how people felt when they watched the movies. I know that he’s said that. When I did watch them, I think that was something that I held on. I was like, “How is this making me feel?” It’s so specific, I completely know what he means, because I haven’t had a film make me feel like that in particular. The tension in the air when you’re watching it is so intense, and so I understood what he meant in that way. I was like, “Okay, I see. There’s a specific feeling that he’s looking for. There are performance notes in this and that.” These aren’t things that I’m going to be taking from this film, so I can defer to him for that, but that was helpful.

What can you tell us about Slightly?

Gourav: The backstory that I created in conversation with Noah and [producer] Dana [Gonzales] was that his father goes to jail. So, in Episode 1, he talks about his father’s funeral, but the way I imagined it, in my backstory, was that his last interaction with his father was when he was in jail, so, it was all through video call.

Because of the issues that his father was dealing with, I just sensed that his mother would be so busy being the caretaker and the caregiver to the father that he got ignored as a child. I feel like he’s had a very traumatic childhood, and now he’s here. I feel like his entire arc then becomes about doing the right thing. I feel like those are the values that he inherits from his mother, where his mother would have constantly been like, “Your father was a nice guy, but at the end of the day, he did something bad for which he’s going to jail.” Try to do good in your life and let goodness overall conduct your behavior in life, which is what Slightly tries to do at every stage.

How did you feel your character’s complicated connection with a father figure, how does that motivate how you connect with other characters in the series? Do you feel like you’re always looking for new father figures or trying to establish being almost a father figure or role model to other characters on the show?

Gourav: It’s interesting you ask me that because I feel like in [Babou Ceesay’s] Morrow, he finds a father because I feel like he’s not had an older male presence in his life that actually cares for him or that’s actually spent time with him. When Morrow does that, he feels very good about it, which is why I also feel like he agrees to help Morrow out. Because, of course, there’s an element of that being a stranger and he does these weird things where he downloads all the data and it’s very scary for him, but also he’s nice to me, he’s kind to me, and he wants to be my friend. I think that because he misses that father figure element in his life, in his personal life, he could so easily trust Morrow.

You’re playing a character inside a character inside another body. There are all these layers to the emotional, mental preparation that you’re doing. There’s also the physical aspect of being a badass that’s running and jumping and fighting. What was more difficult? That mental, emotional preparation or just the physical stunt training?

Chandler: I love stunt training so much. I’m the nerd who always has my yoga mat on set. We did a week of night shoots. It’s like 4:30 in the morning, we’re sprinting and going crazy. I just love that aspect of this job. I’ve always wanted to do something like that, as well, but both have been incredibly fun.

As layered and intense as you just described her character, what I really boiled it down to is the subtle attributes of a kid. They’re extremely honest, extremely open, extremely brave, and extremely adaptive, so diving into those colors amongst everything else is my way in, and holding hands with my own inner child, going, “Hey, haven’t chatted for a while, what do you think of these scripts?” So that’s been a really beautiful journey for me personally, too.

What are the biggest challenges Nibs is facing in the series and what is it that is making her so wary of her newfound situation?

Lily Newmark: She certainly has more of an emotional struggle with her newfound reality than the others, and, obviously, the physicality is a challenge. Everyone has woken up in adult bodies, but as the story unfolds and more information is given to her, it only makes her question herself and her creators. There’s the gap in which there was a marginal amount of trust before, it just grows larger and larger. Sorry if that’s so cryptic.

The Alien franchise, there’s a lot of running and screaming. A lot of dripping monsters. What surprised you about the actual scripts that were completely different from what you thought an Alien TV show would be?

Newmark: Well, what I found refreshing is the humor, especially with the “Lost Boys.” Because we are children, we do find the light in very dark situations, and we don’t realize, I suppose, that we’re being humorous, as children don’t, oftentimes. I think the fact that there can be a jovial nature to the characters in a very scary environment, that was a surprise.

Young: I think with it being set on Earth, because we see different planets, we see some of Earth in some of the movies, but basically, not to degrade an entire film franchise, but most of it is people trapped on a spaceship with an alien, whereas this is, “Well, what if it was on Earth?” It immediately opens all the doors, because if an alien gets released into our home, everybody’s screwed, and whose fault is that?

I think accountability is a big thing. I think what it means to grow up is a big thing in this. Corporations being the new government is … It’s stuff that people talk to you about on Twitter. I think once you set it on Earth and it’s not about being in space — space is a part of the show, but I think that really opens all the doors in terms of where the show can go. And with it being a show instead of it being a movie, there’s more stories you can tell, and it could go on for quite some time, assuming people watch.

As a fan, was there even part of you that was maybe even apprehensive getting too far away from what we love about Alien and Aliens?

Young: Well, that’s the thing. It’s also about, what do you love about Alien and Aliens?Because so many people have different … I think basically everybody can agree that the first two are flawless. I think that was really … that’s our focus. The same aesthetic, the same ’70s futurism. We can’t keep updating what our version of this is in the future, because Prometheus‘s version of that is very different from Alien. So I think sticking to the roots of the original, sticking with what Ridley Scott was trying to do with that movie, I think that’s actually one of the most reassuring things.

Because if they said, “We’re doing a TV show that’s based off of when they brought Ripley out of time hundreds of years to work with these pirates,” I’d be like, “What? Is that the one you want to do? For Season 1?” So to go, really, to those first two movies and take inspiration from those and connect it to those films is very reassuring, but also it means that I can just do my job because I can just trust that everybody else knows what’s going on. I’m also playing a character who doesn’t know what’s going on. So … Convenient. Normally, I have to play guys that know everything and I don’t know anything, but this time it’s easy.

When you saw and learned more about Nibs, did you realize what it was that was so intrinsic to your own personality to bring Nibs to life?

Newmark: I’m still trying to figure that out, because it’s a compliment, but also she’s incredibly neurotic. She’s incredibly fragile. I am both those things. I’m very aware I’m both those things, and she also has a secret strength within her that she’s unaware of, which I think I can relate to as well. But just being so terrified of the world and your place in it, I think it’s something that is just on the surface for me all the time.

Other than not knowing anything about where you are or why you’re there, what else about your character really excited you to immerse yourself in this world?

Young: When I got offered the job, as much as they weren’t telling you anything, they didn’t want to tell me anything, either. I had to go on hearsay. Once I realized who the character was and what the place was within the story, I got really excited because I was like, I’m part of a group where we’re the innocents and we’re kids and nobody really … We just shouldn’t be there. We just should not be there. It would be the same as if you went, “Let’s take a three-year-old and throw them into the middle of Braveheart.” Not a great idea, but dramatically, very interesting to watch, let’s see where this goes. I think it’s a bit of that.

It’s these kids who are curious and don’t know that they’re in danger and discover that the hard way. You see something scary at the end of a corridor, instinctively, you might want to get out of there, but a kid might respond differently from an adult human or a synth. I think that in itself is just all these different avenues of how people could react to this thing. Because that’s what we do as fans. We go, “Well, who would I be? What would I do in that situation? I’d punch the xeno in the face. I’d be fine. No, you wouldn’t, bro. You wouldn’t be okay.” But with these kids, they might literally think they can do that.

Ajayi: I think [my character] really cares about the people that he’s surrounded by and I think he’s afraid of loneliness. I think we all are — you get older and you go into loneliness, boredom, that stuff, but the way he deals with it, it’s in the way that he deals with his negative feelings, that’s where we deviate. My negative feelings, I take them head-on. In a conversation with a mate or with a pint with a mate or just a walk, go take myself on a long walk by the Thames in London, just sink in, but he just — the consequences don’t quite compute for him unless there’s a childish naivety there. There’s also an “always look on the bright side of life”-type vibe that he has, he really does accentuate the positive as a person, it’s actually really admirable, he’s teaching me a lot.

James: Curly is very headstrong, knows herself kind of person. I think that was something that I really loved about her. Ensemble work is something that I also really love. It’s just so fun to be able to play this entire mix in a room, but I think Curly specifically, she’s just eager to prove herself. She’s just eager to get out there. She gets her elbows out. She’s keen to move through and prove herself to people, and I think that attitude is fun. Entering a room and standing there with your feet on the ground, that feeling. That was exciting.

What was it like embracing more of having to convey a rudimentary, primal, almost an infantile mindset in the body of an adult?

Young: It’s pretty interesting, because a lot of it is in the scripts and the mannerisms. On some level, your impulses are the same. You never change. It’s just that you learn to check your impulses. I’ve decided consciously that I’m not going to pick my nose in public, whereas a kid will just do that. It might be just as they’re about to get attacked by an alien, and it’s also in the words. It might just be saying something that’s a bit naive, and you think that’s a fact, but you’ve just read that. You don’t actually know what you’re talking about. It’s those things that are our clues.

The way Sigourney Weaver was an icon to so many fans, I can already tell how important you’re going to be for audiences. Especially portraying that kid-like wonder, so many kids who are watching younger than they should be watching it, you’re going to be such a hero to them, so inspirational to them. Is that something you think about on set or are you trying to get through the day?

Chandler: I really don’t try to think about the end result. When I’m working, I try and just welcome anything and everything that comes my way to serve the moment, to be as honest as I can and then let it go, and let it be. I think if you start thinking about the end result of what can become or what could be, that’s not why I do this. I just want to go and play pretend with some incredible actors that I get to work with. If my work can touch one person and make them feel a little less alone, I’ve done my job. That’s literally all I want to do. Everything else is just extra. I try not to think about that.

After bringing your character to life, how do you think playing them has impacted you?

Ajayi: To embrace the lightness, to really embrace lightness, and I think that’s a massive part of the show. I was thinking for a while about why children develop bodies, like, why? You look at the world that we live in at the minute, such a technological generation of children are being raised, children that don’t play outside, but also such a socially conscious generation of children coming out, and yes, whilst these things are good and amazing, there’s a lot of pressure, mental pressure that children have, and it’s worrying. It’s a shame to see. You wouldn’t run outside, eat a worm, and throw stones at each other, and fall off their bikes, but I think this show puts that freedom that children have back into the mix, within such an intense context.

James: I take away from her, and actors do, a lot of what my character experiences in this. She’s just simply full of gratitude for the experience and for the opportunity that she’s been given. I felt that reflected in my own experience as a human. It’s just that full circle of gratitude to be on this. I don’t know about the morality of the AI and all that stuff, so I felt a big connection.

Is there a favorite episode that you have, without necessarily revealing why?

Chandler: Well, that’s hard because we haven’t filmed everything, and so, no, I don’t. I love the journey, though. Every episode brings a complete, new color to this piece, and they build on each other in really beautiful ways, so they all stand alone, I should say.

Young: For me, Episode 6 will be a really, really exciting one. I haven’t got there yet, and I’m buzzing.

Ajayi: There’s so many. There’s a lot of really sweet moments here and you get to watch this kid learn to grow up through some of the circumstances that he and his friends find themselves in. I’m just really excited to walk that journey, I can’t really say specifically, because that scene is very, very good, it’s amazing, but no, I’m just really inspired by the journey that he goes on.

Gourav: I think the final two episodes are when everything ties in together and all the heavy action happens, but I’ve had a bunch of different favorite scenes. There’s one favorite scene that always cracks me up where the team is wrecking the spaceship for survivors and then they hear this loud music. They’re like, “Where’s this music coming from?” And then they knock on this door and this guy who’s dressed as a French lordship opens the door and they’re stunned. They’re like, “What are you doing here? There’s a spaceship that’s crashed into your building. Get out!” And he’s like, “Well, if it was anything serious, I’m sure [Boy Kavalier] would have told me, because we go to the same club. And anyway, the Caspians are here.” And they’re like, “We don’t care about the Caspians, man. Get out of here. Save yourselves.”

I feel like just to subvert that situation through comedy where there’s these bunch of really rich people living in that building who have no idea that a spaceship has crashed. They don’t care, and they just want to have a party. It’s so funny, man, because there’s people that’s dying but there’s also a party that’s happening and that needs to continue.

Alien: Earth premieres on FX on August 12th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or Instagram.

Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.

The post Alien: Earth’s Hybrid Stars Talk Taking on the Xenomorph appeared first on ComicBook.com.

August is arriving in a couple of weeks, and arriving with the new month is a slew of new movie and TV options on Hulu. On Thursday afternoon, Hulu released its latest monthly newsletter, announcing all of the titles set to join its streaming lineup in the month of August. That incoming list is anchored by not one, but two massive TV shows that have had fans buzzing with anticipation for months.

On August 4th, Hulu is bringing back one of the most beloved animated shows of all time with the 14th season of King of the Hill. All 10 episodes of the Mike Judge revival will be released on the same day.

Just over a week later, on August 12th, Hulu will debut the first two episodes of the new FX series Alien: Earth, from Fargo and Legion creator Noah Hawley. This new series marks the Alien franchise’s first foray into television, with new episodes releasing weekly after the premiere.

You can check out the full list of Hulu’s August additions below!

August 1st

Foundation Forward: Complete Season 1
Kids Diana Show: Greatest Playtime Adventures: Complete Season 1
MTV Floribama Shore: Complete Seasons 1-2
Survivor: Complete Seasons 23-24
Undercover Boss: Complete Seasons 7 and 11
10 Things I Hate About You
28 Days
A Simple Favor
The Beach
Black Knight
The Brothers McMullen
Click
Coyote Ugly
Date Night (2010)
Devil in a Blue Dress
The Devil Wears Prada
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
District 9
Equity
Evil Dead (2013)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Father Of The Bride
Father Of The Bride Part II
Forrest Gump
The Full Monty
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Ice Age
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
Ice Age: Continental Drift
Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs
Ice Age: The Great Egg-scapade
It’s Complicated
Kick-Ass
Old School
One Hour Photo
The Other Woman
Night Shift (2023)
Practical Magic
Pretty Woman
The Proposal
Raising Arizona
Ready Or Not
Resident Evil: Extinction
Rio
Robots
Scarface (1983)
The Sessions
Simply Irresistible
Stay
Super 8
Take Shelter
Taken
Thank You For Smoking
Thirteen
Under The Tuscan Sun
Weekend At Bernie’s
Win Win

August 2nd

Alone: The Beast: Complete Season 1
Alone: The Skills Challenge: Complete Season 1
Body Cam: Complete Seasons 8-9
Evil Lives Here: Complete Season 16
Mary J. Blige’s Family Affair
Vanished in Death Valley
The Marksman (2021)
Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story
Terror Comes Knocking: The Marcela Borges Story
William Tell (2024)

August 4th

King of the Hill: Complete Season 14

August 5th

Capturing Their Killer: The Girls on the High Bridge: Complete Docuseries
Bob Trevino Likes It

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August 7th

Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil: Complete Docuseries
Find My Country House: Complete Season 2
Fixer Upper: Complete Season 6
The Flip Off: Complete Season 1
Why the Heck Did I Buy This House?: Complete Seasons 1-2
Zombie House Flipping: Complete Season 6B
The Monkey (2025)

August 8th

Ralph Barbosa: Planet Bosa: Special Premiere
FX’s Necaxa: Two-Episode Series Premiere
Journey to Bethlehem
Shanghai Knights
Shanghai Noon

August 9th

American Picker: Complete Season 26
The Challenge: Complete Seasons 13 and 19
Expedition Unknown: Complete Seasons 7-8
Moonshiners: Complete Season 14
Take My Tumor: Complete Season 1

August 10th

The Lost City

August 11th

Copshop

August 12th

FX’s Alien: Earth: Two-Episode Series Premiere
Sharp Corner

August 14th

The Dangers in My Heart: Complete Seasons 1 and 2 (SUBBED & DUBBED)
Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo: Complete Season 1
Road Wars: Complete Season 4
Hollywood Demons: Complete Season 1
Little Boy Lost: An ID Mystery: Complete Season 1
See No Evil: Complete Season 7
Tales From Oak Island: Complete Season 1
The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd: Complete Season 2
Bringing Down The House
Cheaper By The Dozen (2003)
Like Mike
Stuck On You

August 15th

Blippi’s Ultimate Playdate – Part 2: Complete Season 1
Stand Up To Cancer 2025: Livestream
YAIBA: Samurai Legend: Complete S1A (DUBBED)
YAIBA: Samurai Legend (Spanish): Complete S1A (DUBBED)
The Host (2013)
It Feeds
John Wick
John Wick 2
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
John Wick: Chapter 4
Killer Elite
LOL Live with Devon Walker
LOL Live with Sydnee Washington

August 16th

Interrogation Raw: Complete Season 3
Cold Case Files: Murder in the Bayou: Complete Season 1
The Curious Case of…: Complete Season 1
My Evil Sister: Complete Season 1
See No Evil: Complete Seasons 5-6
Waco: Madman or Messiah: Complete Season 1

August 17th

Thanksgiving (2023)

August 19th

Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror: Complete Docuseries
High Country: Complete Season 1
Levels (2024)

August 20th

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox: Two-Episode Limited Series Premiere

August 21st

Alone: Complete Season 4
Call of the Night: Complete Season 1
Farming Life In Another World: Complete Season 1 (SUBBED & DUBBED)
Naked and Afraid: Complete Seasons 9 and 11
Naked and Afraid XL: Complete Season 4
Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing: Complete Season 3
Oshi No Ko: Complete Season 2 (SUBBED & DUBBED)
The Bayou (2025)
Money Monster

August 22nd

Eenie Meanie: Film Premiere

August 23rd

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: Complete Seasons 3-4
Expedition Files: Complete Season 1
Restaurant: Impossible: Complete Season 2
The Great Food Truck Race: Complete Season 15
Worst Cooks in America: Complete Season 28

August 24th

Total Drama Island: Reloaded: Complete Season 2
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

August 25th

Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!!: Complete Season 1A

August 26th

Ruby Red Handed: Stealing America’s Most Famous Pair of Shoes: Complete Docuseries
Little Bites

August 27th

Love Thy Nader: Complete Season 1

August 28th

Bewitched: Complete Series
Customer Wars: Complete Season 3
Storage Wars: Complete Season 12
Thomas Jefferson: Complete Season 1
Imported: Documentary Premiere Hulu Original

August 29th

Hell of a Summer
Sisu
Trail of Vengeance

The post Everything Coming to Hulu in August 2025 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

After years of lying dormant, the Alien franchise roared back to life in a big way back in 2024, thanks in large part to the success of Alien: Romulus hitting the big screen. The spinoff — which took place between the events of Alien and Aliens — was a hit with both audiences and critics, opening the doors for a number of new big-screen opportunities in the frightening sci-fi world. One of the biggest criticisms among fans, though, is that Romulus may have played it too safe, borrowing too heavily from the most iconic components of the series — a complaint which won’t be lobbied against the upcoming FX series Alien: Earth, a project that has been in the works since 2020. Romulus wasn’t the only reason 2024 was a seminal year for the franchise, as that marked the year that production on Alien: Earth took place in Bangkok, Thailand, and ComicBook was on location to witness the ambitious new experience firsthand.

Alien: Earth is the brainchild of Noah Hawley, who previously delivered audiences TV adaptations like Legion and Fargo. Unsurprisingly, his approach to Alien: Earth mirrors his approach to those other properties, as he attempted to distill the essence of each title and bring it to life in a fresh way, as opposed to merely touching on a limited roster of characters or constrained plot points.

“I always felt like, here are the characters you love and I’m just going to tell you new stories about them, and my hope was that everyone would be so happy to have new stories that they wouldn’t be as angry,” Hawley shared with press. “It’s a very different story with its own tone of voice. I have no desire to make it funny, let’s say, or make it weird for weirdness’s sake. Within that, I think what I’m always looking for is specificity in the character details and the design aesthetic, those kinds of details.”

He added, “When I do these adaptations, which I’ve been asked to do a couple of times now, I just try to figure out what the original made me feel and why, and then try to make you feel similar things while telling you a completely different story. When I look at that first movie, it’s not just a monster movie. It’s about humanity trapped between the primordial parasitic past and the AI future and they’re both trying to kill us.”

In the nearly 50-year history of Alien, fans of the series might think they’ve seen it all, especially given that Romulus marked the seventh big-screen entry in the saga (ninth if you count the two Alien vs. Predator films). Through its inherent concept alone, Alien: Earth is giving us two things fans have never gotten from the franchise: a long-form TV series and an adventure set on Earth.

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FX officially describes the story, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and
the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

The Doomed Journey of the Maginot

The Weyland-Yutani ship in question is known as the Maginot, and while the ship itself obviously isn’t the same vessel as the doomed Nostromo from the original Alien, it is essentially the same model of spacecraft. Due to this, production designer Andy Nicholson, along with fellow production designer Jason Knox-Johnston, went to great lengths to study the original Alien, frame by frame, in order to capture the correct details of the Nostromo to replicate it for the series. Their recreation is so authentic, in fact, that art director on the original Alien Roger Christian gets a special thanks in the credits of Alien: Earth, as it was his designs that were replicated.

One big difference between the Nostromo and the Maginot, though, is the purpose of their missions. Whereas the Nostromo served as a commercial hauler, the Maginot was retrofitted to act more like Charles Darwin’s Beagle, collecting otherworldly species from across the galaxy for purposes of research. With this being the Alien franchise, however, you can imagine how well this goes. Still, there persists a number of similarities between the two ships and it’s hard to shake the feeling that a xenomorph could pop out of the walls as you walk through the set of the Maginot and around its layout of iconic cryopods.

A New Era of Fear

For those who might not inherently remember the timeline of the events of the franchise, Earth takes place roughly two years before the events of the original Alien. In this sense, it could be argued that Earth is technically a prequel. When Ridley Scott returned to the franchise for prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, he leaned into other elements of the franchise that were just as ripe for exploration as frightening creatures, demonstrated with his depictions of artificial intelligence. Since this is an Alien project, after all, there will be both the iconic xenomorph and other beastly creatures attacking characters, though Hawley looks to be tackling some of the themes Scott leaned into with the prequels, including AI and the distinction of what really makes a human a human.

Any Alien fan will recognize the Weyland-Yutani name, but Prodigy is a new player in the series’ mythology. Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) serves as the brainchild of Prodigy, with the significance of the corporation in the series sure to spark questions about what happened to the company during the events of the original movie. Interestingly, Weyland-Yutani could be considered the old guard in this world, while Boy Kavalier and Prodigy are pushing more boundaries than the former. One of the ways in which the set designers demonstrated this was through the monitors used by the competing organizations; Weyland-Yutani uses CRT screens with 4:3 ratios, as seen in the original Alien, while Prodigy tech utilizes the 16:9 aspect ratio.

An Immersive Production

With Disney now owning the rights to the Alien franchise under their 20th Century Studios banner, the production could have utilized any number of methods to bring the series to life, such as The Volume, the groundbreaking tech used on The Mandalorian. However, Bangkok ended up becoming highly beneficial when it came to Hawley’s version of Earth in 2120. One component of that vision is the city’s blend of high-tech, lavish skyscrapers against its more urban environments, as the whole city itself is surrounded by thick jungle. It’s exactly this collision of lifestyles and geographic opportunities that is highlighted in Alien: Earth; the more opulent members of society live high above the common folk in lavish skyscrapers, as one’s worth to society can essentially be measured in how high above the ground they live. The production’s sets themselves can serve multiple purposes, as the modular nature of many of these environments means the art department can quickly swap out the set dressing and allow one nondescript room or hallway to be filmed from a different angle and with different props and look entirely unique.

Another added bonus of filming in Bangkok is the climate itself. The tragic and all-too-real trajectory of global warming is projected to reach oppressive levels by the timeline of the series. The tropical climate of Bangkok both replicates the heat of a cooked planet, as well as the intense humidity. The moisture is such a threat within the world of Alien: Earth that various laboratories are in a constant battle against mold, to the point that autonomous scrubbers scour the nooks and crannies of a facility to chip away at the growth, almost serving like futuristic Roombas.

Blending the Old With the New

Even though Hawley and his team pushed boundaries with fresh elements for the franchise, there will still be plenty of recognizable staples and pieces of iconography reminiscent of the original films. Costume designer Suttirat Larlarb and international wardrobe supervisor Srirattana Wattanavitkul borrowed ideas from many of the ensembles worn by the crew of the Nostromo for the crew of the Maginot, replicating the grounded nature of these characters and their histories, while the designs for members of Prodigy and specifically Boy Kavalier allowed for more invention. Lead armorer Benjamin Clarke aimed to replicate the firearms seen in the more action-heavy Aliens, and also consulted his personal copy of Lee Brimmicombe-Wood’s 1995 book Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual, which served as an in-world breakdown of the Colonial Marines’ artillery.

While visiting the set of Alien: Earth, two things were main abundantly clear: every single member of the series’ crew approached the project from a place of love for the franchise, as they went to great lengths to pay respects to the sci-fi series that struck fear and wonder into the hearts of audiences, and that the series looks to take what fans loved about the past and bring it into a new generation. Hawley and his team seem to have found the balance of honoring the past yet not being beholden to it, carrying with them the weight of the franchise’s legacy without being anchored by it.

Alien: Earth looks to be unlike anything else ever seen in the franchise while also being everything that fans come to expect when it ultimately premieres on FX on August 12th.

Stay tuned for more of our Alien: Earth coverage, including exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, by heading here.

The post Alien: Earth Set Report: What We Learned About the All-New FX Series appeared first on ComicBook.com.

FX and Hulu dropped a new trailer for Alien: Earth on Thursday, hinting that there are more threats than just xenomorphs in this series. We know the show is about a spaceship crash-landing on Earth, but it seems there’s more aboard the vessel than we previously predicted. The trailer includes voice-over narration by the character Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who explains, “This ship collected specimens. Five new lifeforms from distant planets. Monsters.” At the same time, the trailer shows a few glimpses of alien creatures, though they may be forms of the “ovamorph” egg we’ve seen in the series before. Whether these “monsters” are all xenomorphs or not, it sounds like we’ll be getting some new creature designs when Alien: Earth premieres on August 12th.

Thursday’s trailer includes several haunting shots of violence and destruction on the crashed spaceship, including evidence that the humans on board were attacked by facehuggers. That’s about what fans expected from this show already, but Morrow’s ominous words about a different threat are more surprising. At the very least, he seems to imply that there were other alien lifeforms onboard the ship at one point, and that perhaps they’re as monstrous as the xenomorph itself.

The trailer clearly shows one close-up shot of a goat or sheep, but considering this series takes place on earth, it’s likely this is an earthbound creature, not an alien that has coincidentally evolved to resemble one. Other than that, it we see a shot of something drooping down through a ceiling hatch that looks a bit like an upside down ovamorph. We know that the xenomorph takes on genes and characteristics from its hosts, so it’s possible this is just a unique variation of the life cycle we haven’t seen yet, but it could also be one of the new “monsters” Morrow warns about.

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Of course, if there are new creature designs in this show, it would make sense for the producers to hold back the big reveal until it premieres. The Alien franchise thrives on suspense, and that should be just even more important in a TV series with a weekly release format. It’s also possible that all the alien lifeforms on this ship have been attacked by xenomorphs before it crashes, so that all we’ll see are five new variations on the monster we already know.

Either way, this will clearly be a creature feature for the ages. Alien: Earth kicks off with a two-episode premiere on FX and Hulu on Tuesday, August 12th. Previous Alien titles are streaming now on Hulu.

The post New Alien: Earth Trailer Threatens the Planet With More Than Xenomorphs appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Filmmaker Ridley Scott changed the entire landscapes of both sci-fi and horror in 1979 when he released Alien into the world. Nearly 50 years later, many audiences still consider that debut entry the benchmark by which to measure all successors. The franchise has expanded in various ways since then, including sequels, cinematic crossovers, comic books, and video games, but Alien is about to head into uncharted territory with its first live-action TV series, Alien: Earth. A lot could be riding on such an expansion, as such an extension of a beloved concept could be a make-or-break adventure for some filmmakers, but for creator Noah Hawley, who previously delivered adaptations Legion and Fargo, it’s only the latest exciting reimagining in a long line of beloved revivals. Alien: Earth lands on FX on August 12th.

“Those first two movies, which are really my bellwether that I’m going against, the first one is such a ’70s movie, and the second one is such an ’80s movie,” Hawley shared at a press event at which ComicBook was present regarding his approach to the project. “The first film, really, space truckers, it has that blue collar — these are people who work for a living. The second film, they’re grunts. You introduced Paul Reiser, but he’s middle management, at best. I wanted to keep some of that identity, which we get in through Alex [Lawther]’s character, Hermit, and the grunts that he’s with. I also felt like we had to see now what the level above is, and so the trick was to try to figure out how to show the elite while still holding that tone of voice. I also feel like that first movie, with Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton, it’s a little bit Waiting for Godot. We’re going to a place, we don’t know where, to do a thing, we don’t know what, for people we don’t know. There’s a little bit of that individual getting lost in the system that I think is a big theme for us.”

FX officially describes the series, “In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype, named ‘Wendy,’ marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, ‘Wendy’ and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever
imagined.”

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While certain elements of the big-screen franchise have depicted the priorities of massive corporations, largely in how disposable they perceive human life, Hawley is diving even deeper into these realms.

“I don’t think that in the ’80s and the ’70s they could have envisioned the Elon Musks of the world at that point,” the writer confirmed. “We’re in a different era and I felt like, in order to make it feel contemporary, we needed to address that idea that this whole thing is the whim of Prodigy, and what you get in a corporation is a diffused decision system, where nobody actually decides. It’s nobody’s fault and therefore it doesn’t have to be a human decision. I think what we’ve reached now is something worse in a way, which is that … I think about that Twilight Zone episode where there’s the kid who has all the powers and everyone around him has to act like all they want to do is make him happy and keep him happy. There’s something so awful about having to please someone who doesn’t have a rational view of the world or is subject to whim. I think that’s the spin on it that we brought to it. The Weyland-Yutani side is more of that corporate identity.”

The Alien franchise is deservedly known for birthing one of the greatest movie monsters of all time with the xenomorph, and while the iconic creature is set to make an appearance in Alien: Earth, much like how Ridley Scott returned to the franchise for two prequel films that dove deeper into the world’s mythology, those beasts are just the tip of the iceberg.

“When I do these adaptations, which I’ve been asked to do a couple of times now, I just try to figure out what the original made me feel and why, and then try to make you feel similar things while telling you a completely different story. When I look at that first movie, it’s not just a monster movie. It’s about humanity trapped between the primordial parasitic past and the AI future and they’re both trying to kill us,” Hawley explained. “To the degree that it’s a TV show, it’s multiple hours of a story. Even if I have 60% of the best action or horror on TV, I still have 40% of, ‘What are we talking about?'”

He continued, “I like that idea of picking a moment in Earth’s history, which is a bit like the Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse moment, where everyone knows that electricity is a thing and everyone’s fighting to control it, so I like this idea that we have artificial intelligence, everyone’s trying to figure out how humanity transcends to the next level. Artificial intelligence, is it enhancing the human body mechanically or is it this transhuman idea? That felt like a really interesting conversation to have, to then bring the monsters into it, because the show and a lot of science fiction is really about the idea of, does humanity deserve to survive? If you remember, Sigourney Weaver in the second movie, she’s like, ‘At least they don’t f-ck each other over for a percentage.’ So to be able to bring in not just the physical or the body horror, but to bring in that moral horror of humanity, the things that we do to each other, was really a driving force.”

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Even though the series is exploring bigger ideas than just running away from a creature, don’t worry, there’s plenty of xenomorph mayhem.

“It’s the dynamic of what makes something cinematic. It’s the moment that you add in the visual storytelling of horror or action,” Hawley pointed out of the role the monster plays. “You’re expanding the amount of time it takes to shoot these things, and we have some very big set pieces that require a disproportionate amount of our shooting schedule compared to the amount of screen time. You just have to work all that stuff into it. Certainly, in the design phase with Wētā, I didn’t want to mess with the silhouette of the creature at all. I felt like the audience wants that classic [creature], but then within that, I felt like I wanted to experiment with a couple of ideas about the creature and ways in which … because I always felt like it was the least effective when it looked like a guy in a suit. There are elements in the classic — there’s just this big rib cage, which feels very human to me.”

He added, “I wanted to try to minimize that and play around with some other ideas. That was a very fun process to work on with Wētā, but the facehuggers, I don’t want to mess with that at all. You want that to fit the original. And then [there are] some coloration issues with what color it is. It’s very black in the movie and I wanted to play into more of the bug-like quality of it, so maybe it falls a little more in the roach coloration. You can get in trouble for keeping it the same and you can get in trouble for changing it, so I figure I’ll just be in trouble for whatever.”

Alien: Earth marks a first for the franchise not only for being the first live-action, long-form TV show set in this world, but it also marks the first time an entire adventure unfolds on Earth, outside of the crossover Alien vs. Predator.

“None of us have ever been in space. I think what Ridley managed to do in that first film was to create a workplace that we could identify with, because it might as well have been a factory for all that we knew on the inside,” Hawley explained. “That made it recognizable and very different than Star Trek’s Apple Store aesthetic or even the Star Wars, just ripping-yarn adventure tale. It felt real. Everything was dripping, it was rusty. It just felt real to us here on Earth. Also, one of the things that all the movies share in common is that they’re all trapped in a spaceship prison and I wanted to expand outside of that. You have to have layers of containment, but you also, by expanding the purview of it, you expand the risk of it, as well, because we know that to go from just a small outbreak to a global phenomenon can happen very, very quickly.”

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A key fixture in Hawley’s approaches to any adaptation in a beloved property is to find a way to bend the rules of expectations without entirely breaking them. Fargo and Marvel’s Legion have their fan bases, yet those might not come with the same expectations as Alien.

“You’re making the show for an audience and you want the audience to be happy. I respect my audience and audiences are very sophisticated now,” the filmmaker confessed. “I always looked at it like with Legion — I think when you take six issues of a comic book and you call that your series or your movie, then invariably you have to change a lot of things. I think that makes an audience angry, fans of the comic, but I always felt like, ‘Here are the characters you love and I’m just going to tell you new stories about them,’ and my hope was that everyone would be so happy to have new stories that they wouldn’t be as angry.”

He joked, “I do have a friend who worked on one of the Star Trek shows who said, ‘Nobody hates Star Trek more than a Star Trek fan.’ You just have to manage that, but it is a very different audience and certainly a different audience than Legion, also, in a way. It’s a very different story with its own tone of voice. I have no desire to make it funny, let’s say, or make it weird for weirdness’s sake. Within that, I think what I’m always looking for is specificity in the character details and the design aesthetic, those kinds of details. I don’t know anyone else who gets to make Fargo and Alien in the same year, so I feel very lucky about that.”

The franchise as a whole has largely focused on adult characters, given the nature of how they find themselves in terrifying scenarios, though Alien: Romulus focused on younger characters than previously seen and Aliens highlighted how the young Newt could evade the xenomorphs. Alien: Earth features its fair share of adult characters, but also explores the idea of child-like consciousnesses being transferred into synthetic bodies.

“We’re also playing a lot with the idea of children and adults and what it means for a child to become an adult. If you take a child’s mind and you put it in an adult body, that doesn’t make it an adult, and so much of that process of growing up is biological. It’s hormones and the physical restructuring of your brain, and so you have to simulate adolescence in some way,” Hawley recalled. “That’s interesting to me in terms of the 40% of what we are talking about. Also, having a now-teenage daughter, that process between girlhood and young adulthood, on some level, there could be … there’s either a desire to grow up too fast or a reluctance to grow up. Both of those are really interesting to explore, what it means to suddenly find yourself in an adult woman’s body or an adult man’s body, compared to what you had before.”

He continued, “The things that I’ve said about this conflict between biology and the synthetic, which is what humanity is trapped between, and does humanity deserve to survive? Then the thought, ‘Well, who’s more human than a child?’ Because they don’t know how to pretend they’re not scared, they’re bad liars. Then you think, ‘Okay, well, James Cameron’s movie, it has a literal child in it, but she’s so much more mature than Bill Paxton, who’s like a child in an adult’s body.’ So I think, ‘Well, that tone of voice is available to me because it is in those, I’m going to use it in a different way, but “Game over, man,” that childishness in an adult setting from an adult.’ Then the poise of the child, those elements, you can’t divorce those from James Cameron’s movie, and so that’s interesting to work in there. This idea that adult minds are too fixed to make the transition, and so children’s minds are more flexible, they’re literally changing where in your physiognomy that your rational, your executive function is. So it just felt like that was there to explore.”

Alien: Earth lands on FX on August 12th.

Afre you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

The post Alien: Earth Creator Noah Hawley Teases What to Expect From His Ambitious New Spinoff appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth is not shy about playing with the lore and concepts of its franchise, but it will be staying away from the more recent worldbuilding established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. In a new interview with Empire Magazine, showrunner Noah Hawley pointed out that in this franchise’s four decade history, only two out of its nine movies have explored the ancient origins of humanity and xenomorphs, and to many fans, they are tangential to the larger story. Hawley agreed with many critics who have said that the xenomorph is scariest when it is mysterious, and that includes its origins. That will be the case in Alien: Earth, premiering on August 12th on FX and Hulu.

“Well, look, that first movie came out in 1979 and Prometheus came out in 2012,” Hawley said. “So you’re talking about close to 40 years in which there was no black goo, no David, no Engineers. Alien, for me, is baked in as these creatures that have existed for millions of years. They’re the perfectly evolved species.”

Hawley did not criticize Ridley Scott — director of the original Alien and of Prometheus and Covenant, who was passionate about the “Engineers” angle of his prequels. However, with his own time in the franchise, Hawley said he’d prefer “to keep the lid on that can of worms.” However, he hesitated to say whether he considers some things canonical and some things heretical when it comes to his own series.

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“What you have to do is tell these stories from an organically fan-place within yourself,” he said. Hawley repeated the geek culture adage “nobody hates Star Trek more than a Star Trek fan,” meaning that not every title in a series or franchise is going to please every consumer and fan.

Alien: Earth takes its own major risks when it comes to new concepts and faithfulness to the older titles. It is set two years before the events of the first Alien movie, and it takes place on earth. It seems like the show will bring a xenomorph right to our home turf, though other movies have always made that out to be the worst possible cataclysm that could befall humanity. On earth, it would be practically impossible to stop a xenomorph before it could infect a new host, and the species propagates too quickly to keep up with.

The show’s answer to that is another break from tradition — many of the main characters are Weyland-Yutani synthetics, meaning they can’t be hosts for more xenomorphs. However, the main character, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), is the first ever “hybrid” — a human mind and consciousness implanted in a synthetic body. This is a fascinating concept for the series, but because it hasn’t been done before, it will inevitably ruffle some feathers in the fandom.

We’ll get to see how Hawley pulled it off on August 12th when Alien: Earth premieres on FX and FX on Hulu.

The post The One Thing From Alien Franchise You Definitely Won’t See In Alien: Earth appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth stalks closer and closer to its release date of August 12th, and our glimpses of the series are getting clearer and clearer. On Tuesday, Disney released a new teaser for its biggest upcoming streaming titles for the rest of the year, including a few new seconds of Alien: Earth. We finally have a look at the xenomorph itself in all its glory, creeping towards an apparently helpless person and looming over them. The show is a prequel set two years before the original Alien movie, and for the first time, it brings these monsters to our home world.

Alien: Earth is in strange company in Disney’s new streaming teaser, which also includes footage from All’s Fair, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Chad Powers, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, King of the Hill, Only Murders in the Building, and Marvel’s Wonder Man. This is the second time new footage from Alien: Earth has debuted in a sizzle reel, but it stands out nonetheless. we see a few scenes from previous teasers and trailers before we reach some new shots, including a spaceship flying low over a city.

The teaser also shows Babou Ceesay as Morrow with wires attached to his temples pulsing with light. While synopses and trailers have confirmed that some characters are synthetics and some are synthetic-human hybrids, we don’t know anything about Morrow yet, but this shot may be our first clue. He gets the most ominous voice-over line in the video, warning, “When the monsters come, all you can do is scream.”

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From there, we head to a typical spaceship for the Alien franchise, with a glimpse of the synthetic Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) glancing nervously over his shoulder. We then see the xenomorph stalking towards someone prone on the ground, and they get one blood-curdling scream off as the monster bears down on them.

Alien: Earth begins with a spaceship crash-landing on Earth, and follows the motley crew of soldiers who go running to investigate. At the same time, this group is right in the middle of humanity’s own evolving balance with synthetic intelligence. Sydney Chandler plays Wendy, the world’s first “hybrid” — meaning she has the mind and consciousness of a human somehow transferred into a synthetic body. Several other main characters are synthetics, played by Timothy Olyphant, Kit young, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, and Lily Newmark, while human characters are played by Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, and Diêm Camille.

With the premiere date drawing closer, we may learn more about Alien: Earth soon. The show itself premieres on August 12th on FX and FX on Hulu.

The post New Alien: Earth Footage Reveals First Look at Xenomorph on the Hunt appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Noah Hawley, the creator of FX’s highly anticipated series Alien: Earth, has revealed new details about his long-term vision for the story. In the latest issue of Empire Magazine, when asked to comment on rumors of a five-year plan for the show, Hawley offered insight into his narrative philosophy for the project, confirming he has a clear endgame in mind. This is a major development for the franchise’s first-ever television series, which moves the signature horror from the contained settings of spaceships to the vast landscape of our own planet. The scale of the new series, which follows the fallout from a catastrophic alien outbreak, makes a coherent, long-term strategy essential for narrative success.

“I don’t have it mapped out in any linear way, but I do have the larger arc of it,” Hawley explained. “If you don’t know how it ends, how can you know what it means?” This philosophy provides a dual assurance for the series. Having a clear narrative goal ensures the story will remain focused, building toward a purposeful conclusion. At the same time, the flexibility of a “larger arc” allows the creative team to adapt to the realities of television production, such as a shorter season order, without having to sacrifice a satisfying finale.

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Hawley’s plan must account for a crisis far more complex than anything seen in the Alien films. Alien: Earth‘s story kicks off when a Weyland-Yutani research vessel crashes and unleashes five distinct types of predatory alien species. The situation is further complicated by the introduction of the Prodigy Corporation, a ruthless corporate competitor to Weyland-Yutani that sees the disaster as an opportunity, sending soldiers to retrieve biological samples. This combination of a massive alien outbreak and corporate greed establishes the incredible scope of the narrative Hawley intends to guide.

Who Are the New Players in Alien: Earth?

Alien: Earth revolves around Wendy (Sydney Chandler), who is described as a sophisticated synthetic built with a hybrid human consciousness. This new type of inorganic lifeform has been created by the Prodigy Corporation, led by the eccentric CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). As the trailers revealed, Wendy and Kavaliver have a twisted father-daughter relationship, which leads her to volunteer to retrieve the samples from the crashed Weylan-Yutani ship.

Wendy is surrounded by a close circle of fellow synthetics who form a type of found family. This includes Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, a synth who serves as Wendy’s mentor and protector, and David Rysdahl as Wendell, a synthetic who acts as her brother. They are joined by a group of other synthetics with names that intentionally allude to the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, including Kit Young as Tootles and Adarsh Gourav as Slightly.

The human side of the conflict is represented by key figures from different factions. Alex Lawther plays a soldier named CJ, a central human protagonist who is described as idealistic and trying to do the right thing amidst the chaos. Finally,  Sandra Yi Sencindiver will play a high-ranking executive from Prodigy’s rival Weyland-Yutani, helping to flesh out the history of the corporation that appears all over the Alien franchise.

Alien: Earth is scheduled to premiere with its first two episodes on Tuesday, August 12th, on FX and Hulu.

What are your theories on how Noah Hawley plans to end his Alien saga on Earth? Let us know in the comments!

The post Alien Earth Creator Already Knows How It Ends (Even if It Takes 5 Seasons) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The iconic tagline for Alien has always been, “In space no one can hear you scream,” but for the first time, the franchise is bringing its terror directly to our home world. In the new edition of Empire Magazine, Noah Hawley, the creator behind the upcoming FX series Alien: Earth, has revealed the fundamental reasons for shifting the saga’s signature setting from isolated spaceships and desolate planetoids to a terrestrial landscape. As its title betrays, Alien: Earth unfolds on humanity’s home planet, following a desperate fight for survival after a ship crashes near a city, unleashing multiple predatory alien species on our planet.

“If you’re looking to do a recurring series, you can’t be trapped in a spaceship for 50 hours,” Hawley explains. “And if you can set a show on the planet on which you’re filming, it’s a lot easier.” In addition to practical limitations, Hawley also justifies the decision based on specific storytelling demands of the TV format. “An Alien movie is a two-hour survival story at the end of which, if you’re lucky, one person survives,” he said. “A television show can’t be that. It has to be multiple characters with conflicts and dynamics that play out over multiple seasons.”

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The original Alien masterfully weaponized its setting, turning the winding corridors of the Nostromo into a key component of its claustrophobic horror. Sequels like Aliens and Alien 3 expanded the locations to a sprawling processing station and a desolate prison facility, but they always maintained a crucial element of containment and isolation. Alien: Earth shatters that formula. The trailer reveals that the story of Alien: Earth begins on the fringe of a populated city, a terrifying prospect that immediately changes the stakes. With Hawley already planning for multiple seasons, his comments strongly suggest that this initial outbreak is only the beginning, hinting at a long-term conflict where the Xenomorph threat could spread far beyond a single location.

Everything We Know About Alien: Earth

Alien: Earth establishes its narrative in the year 2120, placing its events just two years before the doomed voyage of the USCSS Nostromo. The series presents a world where the infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation is not the only power player, introducing a major competitor in the Prodigy Corporation. The story is driven by Prodigy’s ambitious CEO, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), and his most significant creation, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a sophisticated synthetic built with a hybrid human consciousness. This unique concept places Wendy at the center of the show’s exploration of identity. The cast also includes Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, a synthetic who acts as a mentor figure for Wendy, and Alex Lawther as a soldier named CJ.

The central conflict of the series ignites when a Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel, the USCSS Maginot, mysteriously crashes into Prodigy City. Viewing the catastrophe as a prime opportunity to steal a rival’s secrets and technology, Kavalier dispatches Wendy to lead a team of soldiers to the crash site. Their mission uncovers that the crashed ship was a mobile laboratory transporting a horrifying collection of five different invasive alien species, including the instantly recognizable Facehuggers.

Alien: Earth is scheduled to premiere with its first two episodes on Tuesday, August 12th, on FX and Hulu.

What are you most excited to see in an Alien story set on Earth? Let us know in the comments!

The post Why Alien: Earth Broke the Rules of the Original Movies appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Ever since the first Alien movie release in 1979, fans have been obsessed with this franchise. It’s hard to get over the impact of the sci-fi/horror classic, and fans have been fortunate enough to get several films, not to mention short stories and even games. More recently, we’ve all been looking forward to the release of Alien: Earth. This upcoming series promises to be a prequel to the beloved first Alien movie, and that thought alone is probably enough to send chills down most spines. After all, we all know that whatever happened before Ripley and crew arrived could not have been good. That said, while we’re waiting on Alien: Earth, there’s another Alien series that we should be spending more time talking about.

Alien: Earth will be set before the events of Alien and star a wide array of actors, including Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, and dozens of others. From the sounds of it, the stakes have never been so high, with the lethal xenomorphs setting their sights on a new target. It’s scheduled to begin releasing on FX and FX on Hulu on August 12th; however, before that release date arrives, there’s a different series available to fans, and that’s Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series.

What Is Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series?

Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series is, unsurprisingly, a series based on the classic Alien franchise. Unlike a lot of what we’re used to seeing, this series is entirely animated. That’s because it’s based on a video game of the same name, Alien: Isolation. That groundbreaking video game made fans fall in love, and if that wasn’t enough, the game won several awards, including the 2015 Game Developers’ Choice Awards.

Interestingly, Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series brought back many of the same voice actors from the game, allowing them to reprise their roles. That includes Andrea Deck, George Anton, Richie Campbell, Sean Gilder, William Hope, Anthony Howell, and many others. It was a detail that certainly made fans of the original game happy, to put it mildly.

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Before anyone asks, yes, Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series does include cut scenes from the game version. Some may consider that a clever use of resources, and it’s a great way for non-gamers to experience the story told in Alien: Isolation (alternatively, they can always watch a streamer play through the game). The show also used newly rendered scenes and filmed a few first-person segments from the game to create what was designed to be a cohesive story from start to end.

A Quest for Answers

Both iterations of Alien: Isolation are set around fifteen years after the events of Alien, so while they’re not a prequel, they do continue the story. The story follows Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the franchise’s favorite character. She’s on a quest to understand what happened to her mother, which brings her to a decaying space station. Obviously, that doesn’t bode well, no matter how one looks at it.

It all begins going wrong when the Weyland-Yutani corporation learns that a flight recorder survived whatever happened onboard the Nostromo. Naturally, a team is being sent to retrieve this recorder. Amanda is going to get answers about her mother; meanwhile, Nina Taylor of the legal division is more concerned about finding proof that the Nostromo disaster wasn’t Weyland-Yutani’s fault. Of course, the tale wouldn’t be complete without at least one android character, this time by the name of Christopher Samuels.

Much like her mother, Amanda quickly finds that nothing is quite what it seems. What should have been a simple retrieval mission rapidly becomes a battle for survival, as xenomorphs spring from the shadows and converge. The Ripley women are clearly made of sterner stuff, capable of making life-saving decisions with little time for consideration. There are a few other running themes that will feel familiar to fans, from the android plots to survivors and other little surprises. Given the relatively limited timeframe of the series, it’s impressive that they were able to fit in so much content.

All things said and done, there are seven episodes of Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series available to binge-watch. Each episode is between eight and fourteen minutes long, so admittedly, it’s not going to take binge-watchers too long to get through the entire series.

Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series is available to stream on YouTube. Alien: Earth will be available on both FX and FX on Hulu starting on August 12.

The post Before Alien: Earth, There’s Already A Xenomorph Show You Can Watch For Free appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Noah Hawley’s upcoming FX series, Alien: Earth, is set to expand the iconic sci-fi horror universe by bringing the xenomorph threat directly to humanity’s home turf. The highly anticipated show, created by the mind behind Fargo and Legion, will make its debut on August 12th on FX and Hulu. The story is set in the year 2120, a near-future where society is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations, and promises a complex story mixing corporate intrigue with visceral horror. Against this dire backdrop, Alien: Earth introduces new key players, including Wendy (Sydney Chandler), an advanced synthetic hybrid developed by Prodigy Corporation, a major competitor to the infamous Weyland-Yutani.

The main plot of Alien: Earth is triggered by a Weyland-Yutani deep space vessel, the USCSS Maginot, crashing directly into a major city on Earth. In response, Prodigy Corporation dispatches Wendy with a tactical team to investigate the wreckage and salvage any valuable technology from their rival. What they uncover inside the ship is far more dangerous than corporate secrets, as Maginot was transporting a variety of invasive alien species, including the instantly recognizable facehuggers. This incident places a xenomorph outbreak on Earth just two years before the events of the original Alien film. As a result, the specific timing of the show means it is perfectly positioned to provide a concrete answer to a major franchise question that has remained unresolved for 46 years.

The Lingering Mystery of Weyland-Yutani’s Special Order 937

In Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, Alien, the crew of the commercial towing vessel Nostromo is awakened from hypersleep by the ship’s computer, Mother. As they find out, Mother has detected a mysterious signal and has rerouted them to investigate its source on the moon LV-426. Following their protocol, a team descends to the surface and discovers a derelict alien ship containing thousands of leathery eggs. However, the mission goes horribly wrong when Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) is attacked by a creature that latches onto his face. Against Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) orders, he is brought back on board, leading to the xenomorph being unleashed upon the ship.

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As the crew is hunted down, Ripley seeks answers from the ship’s computer and makes a horrifying discovery about their science officer, Ash (Ian Holm). As it turns out, Ash is an android who has been secretly following a command from Weyland-Yutani, Special Order 937. This directive instructed him to ensure the xenomorph organism was returned to the company for analysis by its bio-weapons division. The order also explicitly stated, “Crew expendable.” This confirmed that the company knew about the organism on LV-426 and intentionally sent the Nostromo and its crew to retrieve it. Yet, neither the film nor its sequels explains how Weyland-Yutani obtained this knowledge.

Alien: Earth Can Finally Connect the Dots

Alien: Earth could provide a direct explanation for Weyland-Yutani’s actions. The series’ trailer already shows that Weyland-Yutani was capturing and transporting xenomorphs at least two years before the Nostromo was diverted to LV-426. It’s still uncertain how and when the crashed USCSS Maginot first collected the xenomorph samples, but since the ship was on a mission to catalogue different invasive alien species, Alien: Earth will likely explore Weyland-Yutani’s fascination with dangerous creatures. At the very least, the impact of the vessel on Earth would have served as the corporation’s first uncontrolled and catastrophic encounter with the xenomorph, giving Weyland-Yutani detailed data on how deadly it was, which would, of course, feed the greed of the company’s weapons division.

Armed with the knowledge gained from the Maginot incident, Weyland-Yutani’s mission in the original Alien is no longer a mysterious gamble. The biological signal detected on LV-426 would have been recognized as a second chance to acquire the valuable asset they had already encountered and lost. Furthermore, this prior knowledge explains why they would go to such extreme lengths, including planting an android among the crew and issuing the ruthless Special Order 937. The new series can therefore show exactly how the entire tragedy Ripley endured occurred due to Weyland-Yutani’s unethical research endeavors.

How do you think the events on Alien: Earth will directly influence the company’s ruthless pursuit of the xenomorph in the original film? Let us know in the comments.

The post Alien: Earth Could Answer a 46-Year-Old Franchise Question appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The full-length trailer for Noah Hawley’s highly anticipated FX series, Alien: Earth, has officially been unleashed, providing audiences with their best look yet at the terrifying new chapter in the iconic sci-fi horror saga. This fresh glimpse into the upcoming show, helmed by the acclaimed creator of Fargo and Legion, suggests an action-packed narrative that brings the xenomorph threat directly to humanity’s home turf. In addition, the Alien: Earth trailer promises to delve into a world grappling with corporate overreach, advanced artificial intelligence, and the horrifying reality of extraterrestrial lifeforms, showcasing the ambitious scale of the first live-action TV spinoff of the Alien franchise.

The newly released trailer for Alien: Earth plunges viewers directly into the series’ high-stakes narrative, offering substantial insights into the characters and the core catastrophe that guides the plot. For starters, we get a significant look at Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the ambitious CEO of Prodigy Corporation, a dominant force in the corporate-controlled Earth of 2120. Central to his endeavors is the groundbreaking creation of Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a sophisticated synthetic hybrid infused with human consciousness, representing a new frontier in artificial life.

[RELATED: The Most Exciting Thing About Alien: Earth Is Not the Xenomorph]

After showcasing Wendy’s creation, the trailer dramatically depicts the inciting incident that sets the story in motion. A Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel, the USCSS Maginot, mysteriously crashes directly into Prodigy City. Driven by a mix of corporate opportunism and the desire to secure potentially invaluable assets from the wreckage, Kavalier dispatches Wendy to the crash site. She is shown leading a heavily armed team of tactical soldiers to investigate the downed spacecraft, a mission that quickly spirals into a fight for survival. What Wendy and her team uncover inside the Maginot is far more terrifying than anyone could have anticipated.

The Alien: Earth trailer reveals that the Weyland-Yutani ship was transporting a horrifying collection of five invasive alien species. Among these, the instantly recognizable facehuggers make their presence known, promising the visceral body horror the franchise is celebrated for. However, the scope of the threat is significantly broadened, as glimpses of other dangerous life forms are teased, including one that appears as a large, floating, jellyfish-like organism. This revelation confirms that Alien: Earth will not rely solely on the iconic xenomorph but will explore a more diverse ecosystem of extraterrestrial nightmares.

Alien: Earth Present a Universe of Horrors Beyond the Xenomorph

The decision to introduce multiple alien species in Alien: Earth is a bold move by creator Hawley, signaling an ambition to expand the lore of the beloved Alien universe. While the xenomorph remains the undisputed icon of the franchise, the presence of other invasive species aboard the crashed Weyland-Yutani ship allows the series to explore different kinds of extraterrestrial biology, predatory behaviors, and unique forms of terror, preventing the show from relying solely on familiar xenomorph encounters. The floating jellyfish-like creature glimpsed in the trailer is just one example, suggesting that Hawley and his team have delved into creating new and unsettling alien designs that can stand alongside H.R. Giger’s original masterpiece.

The revelation that the USCSS Maginot was carrying samples of five different invasive species also raises significant questions about Weyland-Yutani’s activities just prior to the Nostromo incident, which happens two years after Alien: Earth, according to canon. It implies that the corporation’s interest in alien life forms was already deeply entrenched in its unethical practices, possibly extending far beyond the specific xenomorph species encountered on LV-426. This detail could recontextualize the infamous Special Order 937, suggesting it might have been part of a much larger corporate endeavor to acquire and weaponize various forms of extraterrestrial life. 

Alien: Earth is set to premiere with a two-episode drop on Tuesday, August 12th, simultaneously on Hulu at 8 p.m. ET and on the FX linear channel at 8 p.m. ET/PT. International audiences can stream the premiere on Disney+ the same day.

What new alien creature are you most intrigued to see in Alien: Earth? Let us know in the comments!

The post Full Alien: Earth Trailer Finally Released (And It Looks Nuts) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The newest installment in the Alien franchise, FX’s Alien: Earth series, will finally
deliver on Joss Whedon’s almost three-decade-old rule-breaking plans for Alien:
Resurrection. Following the successful 2024 release of dark standalone prequel
Alien: Romulus, Alien: Earth will act as yet another prequel to Ridley Scott’s original
1979 sci-fi spectacle, taking place in 2120, only two years before the voyage of the
USCSS Nostromo in Alien. Developed by Fargo and Legion creator Noah Hawley,
Alien: Earth will finally make one of the franchise’s most haunting concepts a reality.

Alien: Earth‘s official synopsis reveals a dark and sinister story for the series – the
first live-action TV show in the Alien franchise. The crash of the USCSS Maginot on
Earth, and the release of its dangerous Xenomorph cargo, will pose a huge problem
for the five powerful corporations ruling Earth, Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch,
Dynamic, and Threshold. Wendy (Sydney Chandler), one of the first Hybrids –
humanoid robots brought to life with human consciousness, and a “ragtag group of
soldiers” will take on the new alien threat, with a setting seldom seen in the Alien
franchise’s history.

Setting the newest Alien franchise instalment on Earth rather than on some far-away
planet, moon, vessel, or space station, will make the Xenomorph threat even more
terrifying and real. With a political undercurrent and commentary on artificial
intelligence, Alien: Earth will be an important milestone in the franchise, so it’s great
that the series is putting a spin on this old idea that will dial up the horror. Bringing
the alien to Earth can also pay homage to Alien: Resurrection‘s alternate endings.

RELATED: All 9 Alien Films Ranked

What Was Joss Whedon’s Alternate Plan For Alien: Resurrection’s Ending?

1997’s Alien: Resurrection brought Sigourney Weaver back despite Ellen Ripley’s
death in Alien 3. In the years since Resurrection‘s release, screenwriter Joss
Whedon has vehemently voiced his unhappiness with the movie. “They said the
lines… mostly,” Whedon noted during a 2005 interview with Bullz Eye, “but they said
them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored
it wrong. They did everything wrong that they possibly could do.” Whedon also
commented on the fact that “they changed the ending,” referring to his alternate
plans to bring the Newborn alien to Earth.

In the theatrical ending of Alien: Resurrection, the clone of Ellen Ripley defeated the
alien-human hybrid, the Newborn, while the Auriga crashes to Earth, leaving Ripley 8
and the synthetic Call (Winona Ryder) to look down on Earth and ponder their next
steps. Whedon wanted something different for his Alien installment, however, as he
suggested several alternate endings that brought the battle between Ripley 8, Call,
and the Newborn to Earth. These were all rejected in lieu of director Jean-Pierre
Jeunet’s space-based fight sequence, but Alien: Earth will finally make Whedon’s
Earth-based alien dreams come to fruition.

Test footage released in 2015 by effects company Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.
confirmed Whedon’s original plan for Resurrection wouldn’t have seen the Newborn
sucked through a pinhole in the Auriga’s window, but for commanding officer Perez
(Dan Hedaya) to meet this fate instead. Had the Newborn not died in this manner, Whedon planned several endings, the most prominent featuring a fight between
Ripley 8, Call, and the Newborn in a forest, with the alien’s acidic blood causing a
forest fire. Other proposed settings included a junkyard, a desert, and even a
maternity ward, but none of these were meant to be.

You Might Have Forgotten The Alien Franchise Has Already Brought Xenomorphs To Earth

Alien: Earth will surely pay homage to Joss Whedon’s original ending plans for Alien:
Resurrection, with the series’ title suggesting the entire battle against the Xenomorph
will take place on terra firma. It might be easily forgotten, however, that 2004’s Alien
vs. Predator crossover movie revealed Xenomorphs had, in fact, been loose on
Earth for over a century. These aliens were created through human sacrifice at the
hands of the worshipped Predators at sites like the Antarctica pyramid, and this story
continued in the crossover’s reviled sequel.

2007’s Alien vs. Predator: Requiem set a Xenomorph-Predator hybrid, the Predalien,
loose on Gunnison, Colorado. A veteran Predator and the townspeople fight to take
down the Predalien in a divisive and lackluster story, but the new Alien: Earth series
has the perfect opportunity to redeem the Alien franchise’s Earth-based adventures.
There’s a risk Alien: Earth‘s grounded setting will bog-down the narrative, but with a
political backbone and a talented new cast, the series will be one of the most
important installments in the Alien franchise yet.

RELATED: You’ll Never Believe How Many Times Xenomorphs Have Crossed Over In Comics (So We Made A List)

Alien: Earth kicks off with a two-episode premiere on August 12, 2025, and new
episodes will release every Tuesday on FX, Hulu, and Disney+ for international
audiences.

How excited are you about Alien: Earth finally bringing the Xenomorphs to Earth? Let
us know in the comments!

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Alien: Earth is set for a landing on FX and Hulu in August, and with it, we’ll see a new heroine attempt to survive and stop the spread of the xenomorphs before the entire planet is overrun. But don’t expect this story to just be a copy of Ellen Ripley’s experience on the Nostromo. For one, the story brings the action to Earth, so there’s little chance any of the characters to just launch the alien into space and win the day. Also, don’t expect Sydney Chandler’s hybrid Wendy to act like your typical heroine. This is a new type of robotic hybrid in a world where corporations control the planet, and they might be worse than the xenomorphs by the time the show premieres.

Chandler and creator Noah Hawley spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the series, Chandler’s hybrid character, and where the actress sees her place among the franchise’s other heroes. These hybrids are owned by the Prodigy corporation, a rival to Weyland-Yutani and one of five corporations holding power over the entire globe.

“Let’s just say the climate predictions are coming true. It’s a hotter, wetter planet,” Hawley tells the outlet. “If we just extrapolate where we are now, it’s driven much more by corporations than democracies. It’s very much wrapped up in a competition for technological superiority. The nature of power is, ‘In the end, there can be only one.’ So we’re in the middle of a battle on that level for who has the power in the human race.”

The hybrids play a part in this struggle, with Wendy arriving with other hybrids to investigate the site of a crashed Weyland-Yutani ship in Prodigy City. These hybrids stand different than other types of robots and cyborgs we’ve seen in the franchise before Alien: Earth. The hybrids are exclusive property of the Prodigy corporation as exclusive IP, painting a picture where we’ve moved on from a new phone each year to having companies push out new versions of robots like the latest iPhone. A big difference with the hybrids, though, is that they have a child’s brain in their adult robot body.

[RELATED – From “A” to “Xenomorph,” All 9 Alien Films Ranked]

“We started working with the mechanics of how these kids would move physically, and Noah took us more into the mindset space,” Chandler tells EW. “What is the essence of a kid or a young adult? How do their minds work differently than the adult mind? Kids are so present and they haven’t been battered by the world as much as an adult. So they trust their gut and they don’t second guess.”

Hawley cites Ripley’s quote from Aliens where she says she doesn’t know which species is worse, humans or the xenomorphs, as important to his story.

“I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them f—ing each other over for a goddamn percentage,” Weaver says in the film, getting some sparks flying in Hawley’s neurons.

“This idea of the horrible things that we do to each other,” the creator adds. “Sydney plays a somewhat innocent character who finds herself trying to navigate two kinds of monsters. One is human and the other is from outer space. We do expand on that idea that it’s going to be up to the audience which species is worse.”

For Chandler, she’s just hopeful that fans can see how her character is fresh for the series while not affecting the quality of the story.

“I don’t even want to try to compare my character with Ripley,” Chandler said. “That’s just impossible to do. But I hope people like Wendy as much as I love her … She’s my favorite character that I’ve ever been able to play.”

Alien: Earth premieres on FX and Hulu on Tuesday, August 12, with two episodes leading the premiere and a new episode following every week. Will you be tuning in? Let us know in the comments.

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FX’s upcoming TV series Alien: Earth has a golden chance to breathe new life into the franchise in a manner recent movies weren’t able to. Fargo’s Noah Hawley creates the first-ever Alien show, which takes place two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien film and around 20 years after the other Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Hence its title, Alien: Earth, also deviates from the franchise’s established formula by setting its story on Earth rather than in outer space or on some distant world. Starring Timothy Olyphant, Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, and more, Alien: Earth promises to shake up the standard approach of Alien movies, as its story revolves around a crash-landed spaceship full of soldiers who discover the lethal Xenomorphs while stranded on the Blue Planet.

Alien and its 1986 James Cameron-directed sequel, Aliens, are widely considered the franchise’s best films. Centering on Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and her terrifying encounters with Xenomorphs, the first two movies are unnerving and full of thrills. Subsequent installments, such as 1992’s Alien 3, 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, fail to reach the heights of their predecessors, neither adding anything new to the franchise’s lore nor replicating the terrific scares and action sequences of Alien and Aliens. Alien: Earth will be the first project to release since 2024’s Alien: Romulus, which was generally praised, though it’s hard to see it as a truly franchise-reviving movie. In turn, Alien: Earth has the potential to do what Alien’s recent movies could not.

[RELATED: Where to Stream the Alien Movies (And the Best Order to Watch Them In)]

The Alien Franchise Has Long Strayed From Its Former Glory, but Alien: Earth Can Help

Unfortunately, the riveting horror elements and top-notch entertainment value of Alien: Romulus do not supersede substance. Set between Alien and Aliens, Romulus chronicles a group of young travelers’ harrowing fight to survive aboard a desolate space station full of facehuggers and xenomorphs. The film is exhilarating and features the highest-quality visual effects of any Alien entry; however, Romulus relies too heavily on nostalgia. Subtle callbacks to Alien are far from unreasonable, but the CGI reproduction of Ian Holm’s likeness for the android character Rook is so preposterous, it almost takes one out of the movie.

Before Romulus, the prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant added some much-needed complexity to the canon through elaboration on the xenomorph’s origin, but the films still don’t stack up to the action-packed thrills of the first two Alien movies. The excellence of Alien and Aliens stems from more than their wildly entertaining stories, as they’re also rife with substance. Alien takes on themes of technological advancement, corporate greed, and motherhood are repeated and expanded upon in Aliens, which simultaneously functions as an allegory for the Vietnam War.

Alien: Earth‘s focus on xenomorphs wreaking havoc on Earth is a fantastic direction for the franchise’s next chapter. Horror in the familiar setting of Earth instead of an unknown cosmic location has the potential to frighten audiences much more than past installments. Plus, audiences will be eager to find out how Earth has fared around the time of other Alien movies and learn how xenomorphs ended up on the planet. Alien: Earth is also set to incorporate human-robot hybrids into its material, adding another intriguing layer to the plot. Of course, the Alien vs. Predator films took place on Earth, but their non-canonical status and abysmal reception make most Alien fans want to ignore their existence. Thus, Alien: Earth appears to be the first title since Prometheus to bring something new and bold to the overarching story of Alien.

Alien: Earth‘s TV Format Gives it a Unique Advantage Over Recent Alien Movies

Alien: Earth can bring back everything that made the first two movies great while establishing an interesting new plot line. Given that the franchise has strayed from its former brilliance since Aliens, the switch to TV should excite fans. Alien: Earth‘s episodic format allows the series to develop a thematically rich plot without sacrificing substance for style. Furthermore, the show’s status as a prequel probably eliminates the overused nostalgia factor so many IPs lean into nowadays. A storyline set far away from all of Alien’s past narratives, Alien: Earth can take its time and bring about a tale that’s both horrifying and thought-provoking. As of now, Alien: Earth is set to debut its eight-episode first season in 2025, and if more seasons are greenlit, the show could build upon its foundation in a way the franchise’s movies never had the chance to.

Alien: Earth will premiere on August 12th on FX and Hulu.

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Alien has always been synonymous with the terrifying design of the xenomorph and the visceral body horror it unleashes. From Chestbursters to Facehuggers, the biological nightmare created by H.R. Giger has been the undisputed star of the sprawling multimedia franchise Ridley Scott kicked off in 1979. However, beneath the acid blood and double jaws, Alien has consistently explored unsettling questions about humanity, including the dire consequences of unchecked corporate power, the vast chasms of social inequality, and the ever-blurring lines of artificial intelligence. Now, with FX’s upcoming series Alien: Earth, creator Noah Hawley seems poised to delve into these thematic undercurrents deeper than ever before, particularly through the introduction of a new class of synthetic beings: hybrids. While the inevitable appearance of the iconic extraterrestrial predator will undoubtedly draw in a massive audience, it’s this exploration of consciousness, corporate ambition, and the very definition of life that promises to be the most thrilling aspect of Alien: Earth, especially under Hawley’s distinctive creative vision.

The recently released synopsis for Alien: Earth sets a chilling stage for the year 2120, a mere two years before the events of the original Alien film. By the time the series starts, Earth is governed by five powerful corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this “Corporate Era,” society is a mix of humans, cyborgs (humans with biological and artificial parts), and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence). The game, however, is set to be irrevocably altered by the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation, who unlocks a new technological marvel with the hybrids, described as humanoid robots infused with human consciousness.

[RELATED: Alien, Predator, and Terminator Redefined Slasher Horror by Adding a Sci-Fi Twist]

The first hybrid prototype, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), is hailed as the dawn of a new age in the pursuit of immortality. This premise alone is fertile ground for Noah Hawley, whose previous critically acclaimed works, Fargo and Legion, have masterfully dissected themes of identity, the fragility of the self, the ethics of power, and the often-surreal nature of existence. As such, the concept of hybrids in Alien: Earth taps directly into the morally complex, character-driven storytelling that has become Hawley’s signature, suggesting a narrative rich with existential questions even before a single xenomorph rears its elongated head.

Noah Hawley’s Unique Lens on Reality & Identity

In his TV work, Noah Hawley fundamentally reconstructs existing properties instead of merely adapting them, transforming familiar worlds into stages for intense character studies and explorations of complex human realities. His work on Legion stands as a primary testament to this approach. The series, centered on the Marvel Comics character David Haller (Dan Stevens), plunged viewers directly into the splintered psyche of its protagonist. Offering a bewildering immersion into David’s subjective experience, Legion constantly tears and re-stitches the fabric of reality to question how the human mind can shape the world around it. Hawley achieved this by prioritizing David’s internal journey, utilizing disorienting visuals, an unreliable narrative structure, and jarring shifts in perspective to make the character’s unstable mental state and unique perception of the world the series’ core narrative engine. In addition, the show consistently questioned the nature of memory and sanity, compelling audiences to experience the world through an unconventional and deeply fractured lens.

Similarly, Hawley’s acclaimed anthology series Fargo demonstrates his talent for dissecting the corrosion of morality and the multifaceted ways individuals perceive and react to extreme circumstances. Each season meticulously charts the descent of ordinary people into criminality, exploring how their personal histories, perceptions of threat, and often-flawed memories drive their fateful decisions. Beyond the intricate plots, Fargo excels in portraying the insidious ways systemic corruption and unchecked ambition can dismantle lives, all while examining the sometimes tragic and sometimes darkly comic ways its characters interpret and navigate their chaotic realities. As a result, Hawley’s unique take on the crime genre involves a deep dive into the subjective experiences and moral justifications of his characters, showcasing his fascination with individuals who see and interact with the world in decidedly different ways. All of that makes Hawley the best creative mind to explore the boundaries of consciousness within the Alien franchise.

Alen: Earth‘s Hybrids Take the Franchise Into an Exciting New Direction

The placement of Alien: Earth in 2120 means that the advanced hybrid technology introduced by Prodigy Corporation, specifically the human-consciousness-infused Wendy, is notably absent from the established cinematic timeline that follows. This strongly suggests that the hybrid program is either a closely guarded secret during the events of Alien: Earth, a catastrophic failure that gets buried, or perhaps deliberately eradicated by a competitor like the ever-present Weyland-Yutani. This inherent mystery surrounding the fate of the hybrids allows Hawley to tell a self-contained story that can explore radical new ideas without necessarily breaking established canon. 

The very nature of Alien: Earth‘s hybrids forces an exploration of profound existential questions concerning identity, autonomy, and the essence of humanity, especially when such beings could be considered corporate assets. Hawley’s demonstrated mastery in dissecting the complexities of selfhood and perception makes him uniquely suited to navigate the intense psychological and philosophical journeys these characters will undoubtedly undertake. Furthermore, Noah Hawley’s penchant for surreal visuals and non-linear storytelling, particularly evident in Legion, could find a powerful new outlet through the perspective of the hybrids. Hawley can leverage the hybrids’ unique sensory inputs and cognitive processes to craft mind-bending sequences, visualizing how these beings might experience memory, reality, and their own evolving identities.

This approach promises to inject a novel form of psychological horror into the franchise. Because of the hybrids, Alien: Earth can depict not only the external terror of the “mysterious life forms” teased in the synopsis but also an existential dread rooted in the hybrids’ potentially fractured or uniquely enhanced consciousness. As these characters confront the horrors of a corporate-controlled Earth and the inevitable xenomorph threat, their internal struggles with what they are becoming could prove to be the most unsettling and innovative aspect of Hawley’s vision for Alien. Therefore, Alien: Earth has the potential to push the franchise’s thematic boundaries, delving deeper into the nature of identity and what it truly means to be human in a world on the brink of radical technological transformation.

What philosophical and existential horrors do you think Noah Hawley will unleash with the introduction of hybrids in Alien: Earth?

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FX has officially set the premiere date for its highly anticipated series Alien: Earth, unleashing the xenomorphs onto humanity’s home turf starting Tuesday, August 12th. The announcement came alongside the show’s official synopsis and striking first-look images showcasing the main cast, including series lead Sydney Chandler as the synthetic hybrid known as Wendy. This eight-episode series, helmed by acclaimed creator Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion), marks a significant departure for the franchise, bringing the acid-blooded terror directly to Earth and setting its story in 2120, just two years before the fateful voyage of the USCSS Nostromo in the original 1979 masterpiece Alien. 

The official synopsis paints a chilling picture of Earth in 2120, a planet governed by five powerful corporations: Prodigy, the infamous Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. In this hyper-capitalist future, cyborgs and synthetics are part of everyday life. However, the founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation achieves a monumental breakthrough with the creation of Hybrids, humanoid robots infused with actual human consciousness, blurring the lines between artificial and organic life in a relentless race for immortality. The first of these Hybrids is Wendy, whose existence marks a pivotal moment in technological evolution.

[RELATED: Alien, Predator, and Terminator Redefined Slasher Horror by Adding a Sci-Fi Twist]

The world changes forever when a Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel, the USCSS Maginot, mysteriously crash-lands right into Prodigy City, unleashing its deadly cargo. This catastrophic event forces Wendy and a group described as “a ragtag group of tactical soldiers” into a desperate fight for survival as they discover the ship carried “mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.”

The newly released images offer a glimpse at the human element caught in this nightmare, showcasing the expansive international cast. Alongside Chandler’s Wendy, the series features Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Alex Lawther as Hermit, Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, Babou Ceesay as Morrow, Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins, David Rysdahl as Arthur Sylvia, Essie Davis as Dame Sylvia, and, significantly, Sandra Yi Sencindiver as a character named Yutani, potentially linking her directly to the notorious corporation. The cast also includes Lily Newmark (Nibs), Erana James (Curly), Adarsh Gourav (Slightly), Jonathan Ajayi (Smee), Kit Young (Tootles), Diêm Camille (Siberian), and Moe Bar-El (Rashidi), hinting at a large ensemble facing the xenomorph menace. Intriguingly, several character names (Wendy, Tootles, Smee, Slightly, Nibs, Curly) are direct references to characters from Peter Pan.

Xenomorphs Invade a Futuristic Earth Ruled by Corporations in Alien: Earth

Setting the Alien saga on Earth fundamentally changes the dynamic that has defined the franchise for over four decades. Instead of solitary space stations or desolate alien worlds, Hawley brings horror home, placing the xenomorph threat squarely within human civilization, specifically the corporate-controlled sprawl of Prodigy City. This choice aligns perfectly with the franchise’s latent concern with class struggle and the stark inequalities inherent in this future. In addition, the potential for widespread infestation and the breakdown of societal order on Earth itself raises the stakes exponentially compared to previous installments.

The timeline placement of 2120 is perhaps the most tantalizing detail for longtime fans. Occurring just two years before the Nostromo crew answers the distress call from the Derelict ship on LV-426 in Alien, this series could completely recontextualize the origins of Weyland-Yutani’s obsession with the xenomorph. Did the corporation already know about the creatures before activating Special Order 937? Is the crash of the USCSS Maginot the first time Weyland-Yutani encounters the species, perhaps triggering the secret directives that would later doom Ellen Ripley’s crew? The presence of a character explicitly named Yutani only deepens this mystery, suggesting a potential look inside the company’s highest echelons just as this nightmare begins.

And then there are the monsters themselves. Previous trailers feature the relentless presence of Facehuggers and glimpses of the iconic xenomorphs, promising the visceral body horror and terrifying creature design the franchise is known for. The trailers for Alien: Earth also teased brand new creatures, including what looks like an eight–legged monster. By the looks of it, the xenomorph is not the only creature Weyland-Yutani has been studying in outer space.

The premiere of Alien: Earth will kick off with a two-episode drop on Tuesday, August 12th. Viewers can catch the terrifying debut simultaneously on Hulu starting at 8 p.m. ET and on the FX linear channel at 8 p.m. ET/PT. International audiences will be able to stream the series premiere on Disney+ the same day. Following the launch, a new episode will premiere weekly each Tuesday, maintaining the same time slots on Hulu and FX.

What are you most excited to see when the xenomorphs finally make landfall in Alien: Earth this August? Let us know in the comments!

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In 1979’s Alien, the crew of the Nostromo was stalked and hunted by the now-iconic xenomorph, while each entry in the film franchise has amplified the terror in thrilling ways. Throughout the saga, new chapters would feature larger quantities of creature, or would display all-new variations of the otherworldly beast. While previous teasers for the upcoming Alien: Earth TV series from Noah Hawley hinted at fresh evolutions of the monster, the latest teaser confirms that fans can expect five variations of the frightening animal. You can check out the latest teaser for Alien: Earth above, which is expected to debut later this summer on FX on Hulu.

When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in the sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth. As members of the crash recovery crew search for survivors among the wreckage, they encounter mysterious predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined. With this new threat unlocked, the search crew must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it.

Lead by Sydney Chandler, the series showcases an expansive international cast which includes Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille, and Moe Bar-El.

[RELATED – New Alien: Earth Footage Takes Us on a Terrifying Tour (And Is Packed With Easter Eggs)]

This new Alien: Earth teaser marked an exciting surprise for fans of the franchise in honor of today being “Alien Day.” For those unaware, every April 26th since 2016, 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox) celebrated all corners of the franchise through special announcements, screenings, merchandise drops, and franchise updates. That first Alien Day took place in that year as it marked the 30th anniversary of James Cameron’s Aliens, with the date itself also being significant for the series. In Aliens, the xenomorphs have overrun a community on a moon known as LV-426 — making April 26th, or 4/26, a direct reference to the events of that film.

Luckily for fans, Alien: Earth isn’t the only exciting project on the horizon for the series, as the massive success of last year’s Alien: Romulus resulted in the confirmation from director Fede Álvarez that he was developing a follow-up to that installment. It’s currently unclear if that project will be a continuation of Romulus or yet another adventure set in the world that takes place at a different point in the mythology’s timeline.

Even with the success of Romulus, Alien fans are arguably the most excited for Alien: Earth, as it marks the first time the franchise has earned a longform TV series. Not only does the storytelling structure change up how the adventure will unfold, allowing audiences to spend more time in this world, but the project hails from Hawley, who earned acclaim for Legion and Fargo. Based on how ambitious and unexpected both of those two series were, fans have no idea what they’re in for with the new project.

Alien: Earth is set to land on FX on Hulu later this summer.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

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Alien: Earth is coming to television screens, and FX-Hulu is letting you know with another ominous teaser for the series, in honor of… Earth Day. Like the previous marketing for Alien: Earth, this new teaser takes on the form of a generic PSA ad for planet Earth, highlighting all the creatures, culture, and natural wonders that must be protected on our world. Of course, that lovely sentiment turns on a dime, as a zoomed-out picture of the Earth floating in space transforms to reveal a xenomorph embryo nesting in the core of the Earth – all of which is promptly swallowed up in the jaws of a giant xenomorph drone, which bursts into the frame and fills the screen with total darkness.

Watch the new Alien: Earth, Earth Day teaser below!

Alien: Earth TV Series: What We Know So Far

Alien: Earth‘s story teases the dark turn of fate after “a space vessel crash-lands on Earth.” When Earth’s forces come to investigate the vessel, “a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s biggest threat.” 

A recent clip from Alien: Earth‘s premiere episode seemed to tease a situation where a synthetic android is piloting a ship infested with xenomorphs toward a direct impact with Earth… all while the final remnants of the crew are being slaughtered. That small scene carries massive implications; the Alien franchise has always mixed the threat of monstrous alien beasts with the often-greater theater of humanity’s bend toward capitalistic madness and worker exploitation, as well as the looming rise of thinking machines and androids, which further threaten to make humans obsolete, if not extinct.

[RELATED: Everything We Know About Alien: Earth (And How It Connects to the Alien Movies)]

Alien: Earth is being positioned as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien film, set two years before the events of that film. That raises interesting questions about the show’s stakes; As far as we know (according to Alien movie canon), Earth never had a xenomorph outbreak, let alone being overrun by the creatures (unless you believe the story of AvP). That said, the franchise has never addressed what made the Weyland-Yutani corporation issue the orders to the Nostromo’s android science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), to secure the xenomorph sample, or why the company even had a mandate that their vessels had to respond to distress calls indicating the existence of intelligent alien life. Ridley Scott left those questions open-ended; Alien: Earth may be the story of how Weyland-Yutani first became aware of the xenomorph species – and why they were so hellbent on securing new samples, if all the specimens that crashed on Earth are eventually wiped out.

The show’s cast includes Sydney Chandler as Wendy, who is “a young woman who has the body of an adult and consciousness of a child.” Timothy Olyphant (Justified) stars as Kirsh, a synthetic who serves as Wendy’s “mentor and trainer.” Alex Lawther plays a soldier named CJ; Samuel Blenkin is a CEO named Boy Kavalier; Essie Davis is Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, and Kit Young as Tootles. Other cast members haven’t had their characters names revealed yet, with Sandra Yi Sencindiver playing a recurring role as “a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”

Alien: Earth is set to premiere in the Summer of 2025 on FX-Hulu.

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A new preview for Alien: Earth dropped on Saturday, and the xenomorph’s violence is played off so casually that it’s absolutely horrifying. The scene is very reminiscent of the original Alien, which makes sense since this series will be a prequel set about two years before Ripley’s original fight for survival. We see the inside of a ship with the same retro-style technology as the original movie, but things aren’t going as well here as they did on the Nostromo. This seems to be the inciting incident for the whole show, which is expected to premiere sometime this summer on FX on Hulu.

The logline for Alien: Earth reads, “When a space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s biggest threat.” From the looks of it, this clip depicts the last moments of that vessel before its fateful crash. It shows man at the ship’s computer controls coldly ignoring the pleas of a young woman banging at the door as a xenomorph approaches her. This mirrors the scene in the original movie where Ripley uncovers Ash’s secret conversations with the computer, Mother.

All this seems to indicate that the person at the controls is a “sythentic,” or an android, just like Ash. He also seems to have been given secret instructions to keep the xenomorph alive and bring it to Earth, even if it cost the lives of the crew, damage to the ship, or his own life. The computer ominously predicts their crash trajectory on humanity’s home world.

[RELATED: First Official Alien: Earth Footage Released (Including a Look at the Xenomorph)]

After this scene ends, we see some of the same footage from FX and Hulu’s recent teaser video for their entire 2025 slate. That includes an aerial shot of a valley — presumably where the ship will crash — as well as a tactical response team moving through the area, and a xenomorph screeching into a terrified victim’s face. However, we also get a couple of new shots, which are close-ups of new characters we haven’t met yet.

The hype is building, but they’re leaving the big questions about Alien: Earth unanswered. If this show is a prequel to the original 1979 film, we have to assume that the xenomorph is contained or killed, as Earth doesn’t seem to be overrun with xenomorphs in later films including Aliens and Alien: Resurrection. That doesn’t leave this show completely devoid of stakes, however. We have to wonder what this encounter means for Weyland-Yutani Corp and how it influences the company’s future decisions.

The biggest question, of course, is the release date. So far, FX and Hulu have only said that Alien: Earth will premiere sometime in the summer. Check back for more details as they become available, and in the meantime, many of the Alien titles are streaming now on Hulu.

The post New Alien: Earth Clip Is Absolutely Terrifying (And We’re All In) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Usually, when people think of slashers, images of a man in the mask with a knife come to mind. However, there is so much more to the horror subgenre than that. Often times, the slasher hunts down a group of people, killing them in unique and haunting ways. There is also often a sole survivor known as the “final girl.” When looking at a slasher film from that perspective, an argument could be made that sci-fi classics like Alien, Predator and Terminator are unique takes on the slasher subgenre, revolutionizing what it means to be a slasher.

These are not straightforward horror movies, blending genre elements from science-fiction and action films, but they are revolutionary approaches to what a slasher could be. Plus, they are not just abiding by the themes often associated with slasher films. They are also bringing in themes more common with science-fiction, leading to a larger discussions about the fears of society at the time of each movies’ release.

Why Alien, Predator & Terminator Are Great Slashers

Out of these three, the first one to come out, Alien, is also the most like a horror movie. While it is set in space and the titular “slasher” is an extra-terrestrial monster, Alien has a classic slasher structure despite the subgenre just kicking off in cinema history. In it, a group of blue-collar workers are hunted down one by one by a near unstoppable killer, the xenomorph. Alien‘s horror elements go beyond its film structure. The alien itself feels at home with horror monsters like the shark from Jaws, for instance.

Along with that, there are gruesome deaths throughout Alien, including the xenomorph birth scene, as well as plenty of filming techniques that feel at home in the horror genre — flashing lights, jump scares, shadow play. On top of all of that, Alien has a scathing anti-capitalist message, highlighting how corporations do not care about their workers.

Both science-fiction and horror are no stranger to making a commentary on the fears of society, which is what Alien does, and it is also what The Terminator does. However, in Terminator’s case, that movie serves as a warning about AI and technology while also raising questions about free will, agency, and fate. Terminator sees a “slasher” stalking his prey; yet, unlike most slashers, the Terminator has his eyes set on one target in particular. While Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger prey on a large ensemble of characters, the Terminator just wants Sarah Connor, but he will kill anyone in his way.

[RELATED – Predator Fired Another Action Movie Legend From Playing Its Biggest Role]

Terminator has other horror elements; although, they are more toned down than Alien. This is in large part due to the movie also being an action-thriller, and those thriller elements go hand in hand with horror. Suspense is a massive player in a thriller or horror film, and that is the case for Terminator as well, especially during the climax. Plus, Sarah Connor, like Ripley from Alien, makes a phenomenal final girl. Despite it all, she survives her nightmare and puts up an incredible fight doing so.

Meanwhile, Predator, lacks a traditional final girl, but it takes on a more traditional slasher structure, like Alien does. In it, the Predator comes to Earth to hunt down humans he deems worthy of his skill. He is honestly more slasher than he is monster, especially given how smart he is and how he approaches his kills. Like Terminator, though, Predator is more than just a sci-fi film or scary movie. It is an action film, too, and it is with these action elements that it gets more difficult to claim that Predator or Terminator are slasher films.

Sci-Fi Took Slashers Up Out of the Suburbs

All three films – Alien, Predator, and Terminator – are genre blends. As such, they are uniquely their own thing, and they take some of the best from their respective genres and twist them in inventive ways. In terms of the horror and sci-fi genres, both are known for making commentaries on society, and by blending them together, this elevates each films warning to society to another level.

The slasher subgenre, for instance, often deals with themes of some sort of intruder or outsider disrupting the comfort of what was once thought to be a safe space. Suburbia, a summer camp, school, and even dreams have all been used as settings for classic slasher films. Along with that, these films can often be metaphors for how trauma can resurface and create a cycle of hurt and violence, as is the case for A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.

Meanwhile, science-fiction is a genre that often points at the massive flaws of consumerism and capitalism, as seen in the recent Mickey 17. It is also a genre that often raises questions about agency and humanity through robotic avatars, as seen in the classic Blade Runner and the 2025 hit film Companion. Where horror is often a reflection of current fears in society, science-fiction can build off these fears and act as a warning for the future – or, even worse, stoke our fears about the vast unknowns that are still out there in the universe, like (superior) alien lifeforms, technology run amok, or prophecies of a nightmarish future that is unavoidable.

The Xenomorph, Predator, and Terminator are no Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, but they function in similar ways to these iconic slashers while standing out on their own. They also put classic sci-fi themes – which are terrifying on their own – in a more foreboding, horrific light, thereby creating a hybrid blend of the best of both genres. There’s a reason that these franchises have stood the test of time, and expanded sci-fi/horror into its own viable lane of films.

You can stream these films online.

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The original Alien featured a large ensemble of compelling characters who audiences connected with, but arguably the character that caught the most empathy was the orange cat Jonesy. Luckily, Jonsey managed to survive the mayhem of that debut installment, but in mysterious new footage to build excitement for the TV series Alien: Earth, another feline also encounters some intense situations. The above footage features all-new looks at the Noah Hawley TV series that sees a cat venturing through the Maginot ship, which also features references to iconic elements of Alien lore, from the MU/TH/UR operating system to hyper sleep chambers. Check out the cryptic new footage above and stay tuned for updates on Alien: Earth, which is set to premiere on FX later this year.

The series is described, “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley.”

Joining Chandler in the series are Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille and Moe Bar-El. Just earlier this week, new cast members Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge, Enzo Cilenti, Max Rinehart, Amir Boutrous, Victoria Masoma, Tom Moya, Andy Yu, Michael Smiley, Jamie Bisping, and Tanapol Chuksrida were also announced.

[RELATED – Alien: Earth Fills Out Its Cast (but Who Will Survive?)]

As evidenced by this new footage, one of the more compelling components of the project is just how mysterious the entire project remains to even the most die-hard Alien fans. One of the bigger hits in the realm of cinematic sci-fi and horror in 2024 was Alien: Romulus, which performed well with both audiences and critics, resulting in the announcement that a follow-up film was on the way from director Fede Álvarez. While Romulus served largely as a spinoff from the main narrative, it still fell within the established mythology of the original franchise, with its timeline fitting between the events of Alien and Aliens.

Hawley earned tremendous success with his TV series Fargo, another expansion of an established narrative. Rather than his narrative attempting to re-tell the original story or serve as any direct continuation of the 1996 movie from Joel and Ethan Coen, FX’s Fargo served more as a spiritual successor to its namesake, borrowing core concepts, tones, and themes for an all-new story. Each season served as a standalone story, though all of them remixed and reimagined the overall feeling of the original movie.

In this respect, fans are waiting with immense anticipation of how Hawley will honor the events of the beloved Alien franchise while also putting an all-new and unexpected spin on it. Fans attending the South by Southwest Festival can visit an Alien: Earth activation on March 7th and March 8th at 318 E 5th St. Lot between 2:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Stay tuned for updates on Alien: Earth before it premieres on FX later this year.

Are you looking forward to the series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

The post New Alien: Earth Footage Takes Us on a Terrifying Tour (And Is Packed With Easter Eggs) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Alien: Earth announced 11 new cast members on Tuesday, hot on the heels of the show’s first-ever preview on Sunday night. The new cast members are Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge, Enzo Cilenti, Max Rinehart, Amir Boutrous, Victoria Masoma, Tom Moya, Andy Yu, Michael Smiley, Jamie Bisping, and Tanapol Chuksrida. None of their roles have been announced yet, but as their story is a prequel to the original 1979 Alien, we’re not likely to know who they are anyway. FX is advertising Alien: Earth hard now for release this summer on Hulu. We still don’t know when exactly the show will be available to stream.

Alien: Earth is set two years before the original Alien, and for the first time ever, it brings the monstrous xenomorph to our home planet. The official logline reads: “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”

Chandler’s character, Wendy, is reportedly “a young woman who has the body of an adult and consciousness of a child.” Timothy Olyphant plays Kirsh, a synthetic who serves as Wendy’s “mentor and trainer.” The cast also includes Alex Lawther as a soldier named CJ, Samuel Blenkin as a CEO named Boy Kavalier, Essie Davis as Dame Silvia, Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, and Kit Young as Tootles. Several other cast members have been announced without their characters being specified, although Sandra Yi Sencindiver has a recurring role as “a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”

[RELATED: Everything We Know About Alien: Earth (And How It Connects to the Alien Movies)]

The first Alien: Earth footage released to the public played during an FX ad on Sunday night during the Oscars. It was only about six seconds long, but judging from social media commentary, it left quite an impression on viewers. Many weren’t aware of the show before, and their anticipation is split between excitement and wariness.

The Alien franchise has always kept its signature xenomorph far from earth, preserving the extreme threat that it would pose to all of human civilization if it could get there. Since we don’t see much of the planet in the series, we don’t know its condition for sure, but the movies seem to hint that humanity is alive and thriving down on earth. That means either the monster in this movie will be defeated and contained, or else the impression we got of earth in later movies was wrong.

Alien: Earth is slated for release sometime this summer on Hulu. An exact release date has not been set, but in the meantime, other Alien movies are streaming there now.

The post Alien: Earth Fills Out Its Cast (but Who Will Survive?) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

We got our very first look at Alien: Earth on Sunday night, but we didn’t see much. Footage from the upcoming prequel series was included in a teaser for all of the FX Networks’ shows, including new and returning shows. The whole thing was just over a minute, and the Alien footage is about six seconds long on its own. Still, it shows us the terrifying sight of a xenomorph on our home planet — something that the main series has never done in over five decades. The clip also includes an ominous line in voice-over, saying, “When the monsters come, all you can do is scream.”

Alien: Earth is a prequel set about two years before the events of the original Alien movie, so it’s especially unnerving to see a xenomorph on our home planet here. The clip we got on Sunday night during the Oscars starts with an establishing shot of earth from space, followed by a shot from inside a spacecraft, where the stasis pods are opening up just like in the film. We then see a team of heavily armed soldiers walking cautiously through some tall grass, followed by a look at three of the show’s stars in a wooded area. These appear to be Sydney Chandler as Wendy, Alex Lawther as CJ, and Lily Newmark in an unnamed role.

The next shot is an aerial view of a secluded valley — perhaps the site of this crash landing. Finally, we get to the xenomorph. we see fingers trailing slime from an face-hugger egg followed by a glimpse of Timothy Olyphant as the synthetic, Kirsh, then we see the soldiers entering a cave. The last shot is a xenomorph snarling into someone’s face, but we can’t tell who.

[RELATED: Everything We Know About Alien: Earth (And How It Connects to the Alien Movies)]

According to FX and Hulu, Alien: Earth begins with a spacecraft crash-landing on earth and being discovered by “a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers.” They unwittingly find themselves “face-to-face with the planet’s biggest threat.” The distributors also provided some character descriptions — Wendy is “a woman who has the body of an adult and consciousness of a child,” while Kirsh is her “synthetic mentor and trainer.” CJ is a soldier, we also know that Sandra Yi Sendcindiver has a recurring role as “a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.”

Alien: Earth saw production delays caused by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes, but it finally wrapped filming in July of 2024. It is expected to premiere on Hulu sometime this summer, but an exact release date has not been set yet. For now, fans online are picking apart every frame of this preview, so it’s safe to say the show has found an eager audience.

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