TV
Disney Quiet When it Comes to Potential ‘Alien’ TV Series
Long story short, Disney now owns all things Fox and the Alien franchise is included in that. News leaked just recently that they’ve been working in secret on a brand new entry in the Predator franchise, which lends credence to the belief that the Mouse will also revisit Ridley Scott’s Alien saga.
Two years ago it was reported that “Legion” and “Fargo” creator Noah Hawley had attempted to make an Alien miniseries with FX, which was reportedly shot down by Fox’s Emma Watts.
In a fresh interview, Deadline asked Hawley about the series and ran into a bit of a wall. While it sounds like he won’t be involved in any Alien rebirth, he does express confidence that it’s part of the company’s future plans.
“I know that there’s an effort to reshuffle a lot of things post-Disney takeover and it was a conversation that I had a couple years back,” Hawley says in regards to the potential Alien series. “And I have not in the last few weeks been having those conversations about it. But I know that like any studio there’s a great desire to make the most of one’s library so I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that.”
“Ya know, I have conversations from time to time but I’m not committed,” Hawley added.
Hawley did share some of those conversations in an interview two months back, explaining that he told the execs to think beyond the Xenomorph to come up with the best story.
“As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the Aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s Aliens!’”
Watch for any news as it comes in. While it sounds like there’s not much brewing on the series front, a new film could come sooner rather than later.
Blade Runner is headed to the small screen in Prime Video’s upcoming Blade Runner 2099, set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, in a world where replicants have emerged on top after an uprising.
Humans are no longer in power.
At the forefront of the new series are stars Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Hunter Schafer (Cuckoo), and EW has shared the first images of their characters.
Yeoh stars as a replicant Blade Runner named Olwen, facing the final days of her life. It’s a twist on the Roy Batty story from the first film; here, that story will be told from the replicant’s perspective.
Opposite her is Schafer as Olwen’s partner, Cora, a human fugitive pretending to be a replicant. Olwen and Cora will be working together to investigate missing rogue replicants.
Blade Runner 2099 comes from Alcon Entertainment, Scott Free, and Amazon Studios. Silka Luisa (“Shining Girls”) is writing, showrunning, and executive producing.
Jonathan van Tulleken (“Shōgun”) will direct and executive produce the first two episodes.
Luisa tells EW that Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi noir acts as the series’ North Star, but it’ll forge its own identity: “We leaned into sunshine noir. You’re still very much in the Blade Runner world, but the show is about a birth. It’s about a birth of a city. It’s about a birth of a replicant era. These characters are discovering who they really are. And so the climate is hot, it’s sticky, it’s sunny. We’re on the coast a lot. We’re in Santa Monica a lot. So it’s like you’re seeing Ridley’s texture, but you’re seeing it in the sunshine noir filter.”
The showrunner adds, “The show is really imagining what comes after us, and what does it mean to be human in a world where humanity is no longer relevant?“
Dimitri Abold (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy), Katelyn Rose Downey (The Nun II), and Daniel Rigby (Renegade Nell) also star in the upcoming series. Johnny Harris (A Gentleman in Moscow), Amy Lennox (Only Child), Sheila Atim (The Woman King), and Matthew Needham (House of the Dragon) join as recurring guest stars.
Blade Runner 2099 is expected to premiere later this year, so stay tuned.
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
You must be logged in to post a comment.