Not a Star Wars fan? Well if you’re an Alien fan, you should at least appreciate it.
Dan O’Bannon once famously said that he didn’t steal Alien from anybody – he stole it from “EVERYBODY.” Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, originally titled Star Beast, was penned by O’Bannon, who (along with co-writer Ronald Schusett) had a hell of a time selling a studio on the sci-fi horror tale. Believe it or not, there was a time when the project was completely dead in the water.
After almost making the film with Roger Corman, O’Bannon and Schusett ended up aligning with a new production company named Brandywine, which had ties to 20th Century Fox. The men behind Brandywine, Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill (The Warriors), famously reworked O’Bannon’s script a good deal, but 20th Century Fox just wasn’t sold on making Alien.
And then a little film called Star Wars came along in 1977.
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In the 2003 doc The Beast Within: The Making of Alien, O’Bannon and Gordon Carroll recalled just how much of an impact the success of Star Wars had on Alien getting made.
“When Star Wars came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre,” said Carroll. Added O’Bannon, “They wanted to follow through on Star Wars, and they wanted to follow through fast – and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien.”
After Star Wars came out and was a huge success, Fox gave O’Bannon’s Alien script a green light and a budget, and Ridley Scott was soon thereafter brought on board. The rest is history.
Another interesting note here is that Ridley Scott recently credited the revival of the Star Wars franchise for reigniting his interest in making more Alien movies. “Star Wars will be a juggernaut. Why do you think I’m doing [Alien] sequels?” he said in 2015, just a month before The Force Awakens was released. It would seem that the two franchises are forever linked, and it’s rather fitting that both Alien: Covenant and Star Wars: The Last Jedi are headed our way this year – two films that certainly would not exist is not for the 1977 success of Star Wars.
Just goes to show how hugely influential a single film can be.
