Showrunner Noah Hawley is to return to make Alien: Earth season 2 as part of a new deal with FX and Disney. Things were strangely quiet there for a while. Alien: Earth, the spin-off TV series created by Noah Hawley, ended its first season in September. Reactions to the series were widely positive – it ... Alien: Earth season 2 ordered by FX and Disney
Showrunner Noah Hawley is to return to make Alien: Earth season 2 as part of a new deal with FX and Disney.
Things were strangely quiet there for a while. Alien: Earth, the spin-off TV series created by Noah Hawley, ended its first season in September. Reactions to the series were widely positive – it even won several Emmy awards – and yet there was a lengthy silence where we might have expected an announcement about season 2.
Weeks later, and news emerges that FX, the network behind the series, has finally given the go-ahead for Alien: Earth’s second season. According to Deadline, it’s part of a wider deal between Hawley, FX and Disney Entertainment Television, which means the showrunner will be developing other projects at the network besides this one.
There’s also another interesting bit of information in that same news piece: Deadline’s sources suggest that production on Alien: Earth will shift from Thailand to London for the forthcoming second season. That could suggest a quite different look for the next run of episodes, given that pretty much the whole of season one took place on a lush island in the South Pacific.
Set two years before 1979’s Alien, the series fused cyberpunk sci-fi, a smattering of body horror and some light corporate satire. Sydney Chandler starred as Wendy – one of a pioneering new line of synthetics containing the consciousness of a human. They’re the creation of the mercurial tech CEO, Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), who spots a business opportunity when a Weyland-Yutani ship crashes into a nearby city under his ownership. A bunch of lifeforms are discovered on the vessel and sneaked back to Kavalier’s island lab. Those lifeforms turn out to be less than friendly.
Read more: Alien: Earth | A spoiler-filled exploration (with bad art)
Affectionately riffing on Alien imagery and lore, the series was fast-paced and blackly comic, with one creature design in particular often threatening to steal the show. Also starring Timothy Olyphant, Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson and Essie Davies, the eight-episode run also left things wide open for a second season, so it’s just as well that FX hasn’t cancelled it.
“Noah never stops surprising us with truly original stories,” FX boss John Landgraf said in a statement, “and his unique ability to bring them to vibrant life as a director and producer as well as writer makes him extraordinary. We can’t wait to get to work on the next season of Alien: Earth, as well as some equally exciting future projects in advanced development.”
There’s no word yet on when production will begin or who will star, but it’s fairly certain that all the actors listed here will have committed to making more than one season.
We’ll bring you more on Alien: Earth as we get it.
