In space, no one can hear you scream. But in the comfort of your own living room, watching the brand new Alien: Earth series from FX? Everyone can hear you screaming your lungs out, and that is certainly the goal for showrunner Noah Hawley and his team.
The series is set to bring the iconic science-fiction franchise that began with Ridley Scott’s iconic original Alien back in 1979 to the small screen for the very first time. Beyond the innovation at the heart of the distribution of the series, there’s also boundaries being pushed within the form and content of the show itself. For the first time, a story in the Alien universe will be unfolding predominantly on Earth rather than in space, and also for the first time, the main character will be a synthetic human.
As a direct result of all of this, Hawley felt an obligation to explore interpersonal relationships, heady thematic material, and moral horrors with the project like never before. Recently, the Emmy-winning creator shared these valuable insights and more with reporters at an LA press screening of the series’ first episodes.
“An Alien movie is a two-hour survival story, right? It’s a monster movie. And a television show can’t be that.” Hawley said. “A television show has to be long-form with characters that you can invest in, with relationships and dynamics. I like to say that even if you had 60% of the best action and horror, you’d still have 40% of: ‘What are we talking about? What is the show about?'”
In this way, Hawley saw Alien: Earth as necessitating a bold new approach, rather than sticking to familiar territory as recent films such as Alien: Romulus did. “A horror movie often revolves around: Will your hero survive? And if you have a story about monsters coming to earth, the question is: Will humanity survive? And then the next question is: Well, does humanity deserve to survive?” he added.
With regard to the choice to have the protagonist of the series be a new prototype “hybrid” of an android with a human’s consciousness embedded into it, Hawley said, “This idea about humanity and the terrible things that we do to each other, it really opened my mind as to the types of horror that would populate the show. Not just body horror or creature horror, but also the moral horror of what people do.”
“If you take a girl and you put her into this synthetic body, the question becomes: Is she going to choose human or other?” Hawley continued. “And so it becomes about the push-pull between: Why be human, if this is what humans do to each other? But there’s such a beauty to the human experience. So that’s the tension that elevates it above just who lives and who dies.”
In these ways, Hawley’s Alien: Earth strives to deliver the red-meat horror and action that audiences have come to love about the films, while also pushing the franchise into new territories. For decades, the Alien franchise has served as a true filmmaker’s playground, with the likes of Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and even Paul W.S. Anderson getting to bring all of themselves to the forefront in interesting ways.
With Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley is poised to seize his opportunity to craft something both deeply Alien and deeply of himself.
Alien: Earth premieres on August 12 on FX and FX on Hulu with its first two episodes.
More from Alien:
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter, and check out our YouTube channel.