Noah Hawley has shared new comments regarding his upcoming Alien series, suggesting that the new show, a prequel for FX, will ignore some of the mythos that Ridley Scott introduced in his Prometheus and Alien: Covenant films, which released in 2012 and 2017, respectively. Hawley also mentioned that Scott’s use of futuristic technology (e.g., holograms) in those films “didn’t compute” for him, as they took place before the original films, which featured retro-futuristic technology.
Quotes:
- “Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show 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.”
- “…in terms of the mythology, what’s scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that?”
- “In the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of ‘Alien,’ which is supposed to take place in those movies’ future. There’s something about that that doesn’t really compute for me. 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.”
Series details:
- Set on Earth, roughly 70 years in the future
- Predates the original film series (Alien takes place in 2122)
- Cast members include Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, and Alex Lawther
- Hawley is writing and executive producing
- Series was originally announced in 2020, with Ridley Scott also said to be executive producing
Hawley was asked whether or not he would incorporate the backstory in Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” (2012) and “Alien: Covenant” (2017) into his FX series. The prequel films included a controversial backstory where the aliens were manufactured as a bioweapon by a mysterious race known as the Engineers.
Source: Variety