Showrunner Noah Hawley is bringing his “own thoughts to the design” of the xenomorph in the upcoming TV series, Alien: Earth.
Over 30 years after Alien 3′s famously misleading teaser trailer told us that the deadly xenomorph would be terrorising our planet’s population, Noah Hawley’s upcoming TV series is finally delivering on that promise. It’s even called Alien: Earth, so it’s not like the Fargo showrunner can quietly drop the whole ‘xenomorphs on terra firma’ idea like Alien 3 did back in 1992.
While plodding up the Emmys red carpet during last night’s award ceremony (held on the 15th September if you’re reading this in the future), Hawley talked briefly about the series and its setting, and argued that seeing the iconic monster in familiar surroundings will be “chilling” for audiences.
“There’s something about seeing a Xenomorph in the wilds of Earth with your own eyes,” Hawley said, as reported by Deadline. “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.”
As for the xenomorph itself, Hawley also says he’s come up with his own slightly different take on the creature’s design – something filmmakers have always done in the movies that have followed Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, from James Cameron’s Aliens to this year’s Alien: Romulus.
“What was really fun for me was to really engage with the creature, bring some of my own thoughts to the design while not touching the silhouette, because that’s sacrosanct,” Hawley said, adding that, “whatever the host is informs what the final creature is. I just wanted to play around a little bit to make it as scary as it should be.”
Read more: Alien: Earth | Everything we know so far (and speculation about the things we don’t)
Alien: Earth takes place around the year 2099, some 30 years before the events of Alien. A synopsis put out by FX/Hulu in early September talked about a “mysterious space vessel” crash-landing on Earth, and a team of soldiers discovering “the planet’s greatest threat.”
Given that Alien appeared to be humanity’s first encounter with the xenomorph, it’s hard to say how the series will make its events dovetail with existing canon. All we currently know is that it has an eclectic cast which includes Sydney Chandler, Essie Davis, Adrian Edmondson, Timothy Olyphant, Babou Ceesay, and lots more besides. There’s also a teaser trailer which shows Earth reflected in the domed head of a toothsome Giger monster.
Variations on that creature’s design have ranged from the stealthy ceiling-crawler of Alien 3 (born from a dog or an ox depending on which cut you watch) to the weird Ripley-xeno hybrid of Alien Resurrection. We’ll have to wait and see how Hawley’s Alien: Earth design differs from its toothsome predecessors – and from what host it will emerge. Could a facehugger impregnate a buzzard…?
Alien: Earth is due to stream in 2025.
