Noah Hawley's Alien show will ignore Prometheus and Alien: Covenant backstory
By Daniel Roman
Between Noah Hawley's Alien television show for FX and Fede Álvarez's Alien movie, right now is an exciting time for fans of the xenomorph. The iconic alien created by Ridley Scott has endured for decades, but soon we'll be watching its next chapter unfold across multiple mediums.
Hawley was recently interviewed by KCRW about his show Fargo, which is in the midst of its fifth season. He spoke a bit about his Alien series, dropping a pretty interesting update: despite the fact that Hawley's Alien show is a prequel to the original 1979 film by Scott, it will not feature elements from Scott's own Alien prequel movies: Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. So don't go into it expecting a surprise cameo from Michael Fassbender as the android David.
There are a few more specific ways that the new Alien TV show will ignore the lore established in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. The most important is that it will discard the backstory for the xenomorphs that was established in those movies, where it was basically revealed that they were an alien bioweapon. Instead it'll go back to the creature's mysterious, unspecified origins from the 1979 movie.
“Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show,” Hawley explained. “For me, and for a lot of people, this ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me.”
Another way that the Alien TV show will work around Prometheus is in its visual aesthetics. The original Alien film had a famously old school flair, with retro technology that was clearly of the time. When Scott came back to make Prometheus and Covenant in the 2010s, he made full use of all the advances in visual effects technology, which resulted in a much glossier look. It's similar to what George Lucas did with his Star Wars prequels, except there was an actual lore reason for the shinier look in the golden age of the Star Wars universe, while in Alien it came off more as a continuity issue.
Like so many of the rest of us, Hawley is fond of that original Alien look. That's what he'll be sticking to for the show. “I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me.”
The Alien television series is currently in the midst of filming. According to Hawley, it's shooting to release in early 2025. We'll most likely get to see Fede Álvarez's Alien: Romulus movie first; that one is due out in theaters in August, 2024.
Next. Stranger Things. Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp thinks his comments about the war in Gaza were "misconstrued". dark
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels
h/t The A.V. Club