As our readers are likely to recall, Predator isn’t the only 20th Century Studios franchise about brutal extraterrestrial invaders getting a fresh take from the folks at Disney and Hulu.
RELATED: Prey (2022) Review – A Mediocre Predator Film Playing Up Representation And Female Empowerment
According to a report from Deadline, the Yautja’s old enemy, the Xenomorph, is readying for its toothy closeup as FX’s TV series based on the Alien franchise is preparing to film next year.
FX chief John Landgraf confirmed to the trade that the show’s creator Noah Hawley had delivered all his scripts for the total season order and the project has a chance of debuting in 2023 not long after it wraps filming.
This Alien TV series is said to blend the first film’s horror tropes with the action of James Cameron’s sequel Aliens. However, it won’t feature Sigourney Weaver or her character Ripley in any fashion since it takes place before she comes into the picture.
The show was also mistakenly plugged by Disney as the first time the aliens appear on Earth, even though in Paul W.S. Anderson’s AVP, they were being bred and hunted by the Predators on this planet long before the time periods covered in each film franchise.
“Expect a scary thrill ride set not too far in the future here on Earth,” Disney tweeted in 2020.
At the time, Hawley denied in a conversation with Deadline that there was any liftoff to the Alien series, confessing he’d had been in talks with Disney but was not committed.
A year later after COVID had blown over enough, he said to Vanity Fair production was on track. “I’ve written a couple of scripts, the first two scripts, and we’re looking to make them next spring,” he revealed. “When you get to something with this level of visual effects, there’s a lot of preparation that has to go into it”.
As for putting the aliens on Earth, he 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.”
RELATED: Noah Hawley Claims The Upcoming Alien TV Series Is A “Story About Inequality”
Hawley added his story is about inequality between blue-collar space truckers and middle management. “They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation,” he said. “So, it is the story of the people you send to do the dirty work.”
He disclosed that in his series viewers are “also going to see the people who are sending them. So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved.”
FX’s Alien series is co-produced by Ridley Scott and is likely to stream on Hulu along with Prey and other FX programming. Noah Hawley is also currently working on Season 5 of Fargo.