Inequality is the real enemy in FX’s Alien show…and Xenomorphs, probably

In the Alien movies, the characters must contend with a race of shiny black extraterrestrial murder machines thought to be a “perfect organism.” No matter how many times Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and company defeat them, they keep coming back, always leaving destruction in their wake.

But are the aliens are the villain, or is it the massive super-corporation that keeps sending people to collect alien specimens with no thought for their survival? The heartless Weyland-Yutani corporation lurks in the background of the Alien franchise but has rarely been seen up close…until now. Fargo creator Noah Hawley is working on an Alien TV show for FX, and is sounds like he has a new approach. “In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending them,” he told Vanity Fair. “So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us? There’s that great Sigourney Weaver line to Paul Reiser where she says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t f*** each other over for a percentage.'”

Ellen Ripley won’t appear in new Alien TV series on FX

There will be other changes, too. For instance, neither Ripley won’t be anywhere in sight. “She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it,” Hawley said. “It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”

As for when we’ll see the show new, Hawley is still writing it, but the plan is for the cameras to start to roll next spring. “When you get to something with this level of visual effects, there’s a lot of preparation that has to go into it,” Hawley said. “What’s been really illuminating is to see that the entire film industry had to take a year off and they are now trying to jam two years of production into one year. So it’s very hard to look on the planet earth and see where you might make something in the next six months. Everyone is racing to make up for lost time. So, I figure let that bubble burst a little bit and we’ll do it right.”

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h/t SyFy Wire