We are living in thrilling times for fans of the Alien franchise, particularly when it comes to those who prefer their Xenomorph drama to be of the old-school variety. This past summer, horror revival king Fede Álvarez delivered scares with interquel Alien: Romulus (set on the timeline between Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens), which favored the first two movies’ aesthetics, and now, we’re staring down a TV series that will take place before space truckers ever saw a chestburster birth itself during a meal.
The Alien: Earth series will hail from FX but will arrive only on Hulu, courtesy of Fargo showrunner and Legion creator Noah Hawley. Since those facehuggers could strike at any moment, we’d better get started with what to expect.
Plot
FX recently showed off a brief glimpse of an angry Xenomorph to tease this series, and recently on the Emmys red carpet, Noah Hawley dropped hints to Deadline on how this show will be different from every movie thus far. For starters, “There’s something about seeing a Xenomorph in the wilds of Earth with your own eyes,” meaning that mankind must deal with the horror of a Xenomorph loose on Earth, rather than confined to a claustrophobic spaceship. However, the events of this series take place before Alien, so expect to see plenty of old-school touches, even though the story does take place about 70 years (meaning there will be no Ellen Ripley) into the future.
Hawley did, however, assure Deadline’s Rosy Cordero, “That is truly chilling to think of it moving here among us, and so I can’t tell you under what circumstances you’ll see that, but you’ll see it – and you’re going to lock your door that night.” Hawley stressed that he was able to “really engage with the creature, bring some of my own thoughts to the design while not touching the silhouette, because that’s sacrosanct… But some of the elements as we know, whatever the host is, informs what the final creature is.” He then added, “I just wanted to play around a little bit to make it as scary as it should be.”
FX chief John Landgraf knew that Hawley was the guy for this job due to his “incredible ability to both find a way of being faithful and showing fidelity to an original creation, like to the Coen brothers [with Fargo] or to Ridley Scott’s movie and James Cameron’s follow-up Aliens, but also to bring something new that represents both an extension and reinvention of a franchise at the same time.” FX has further released the following logline:
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.
The series has finished filming a full season in Thailand, and star Timothy Olyphant will reportedly portray Kirsch, a synth, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise because there must be at least one synth in each Alien story. Olyphant has, however, told Vanity Fair that the “the monster takes up a lot of screen time” in this series, so get ready for that Xenomorph to tear our little world apart.
Cast
Olyphant, Sydney Chandler, and Alex Lawther lead this cast, which is made up of a vast ensemble, including Kit Young, Samuel Blankin, Adarsh Gourav, Babou Ceesay, Essie Davis, David Rysdahl, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille, and Adrian Edmondson.
Release Date
FX’s Alien: Earth will premiere in 2025, hopefully followed by multiple seasons.
Trailer
Would you like to see a screeching Xenomorph with Earth in its mind’s eye? You got it: