Alien Series’ Noah Hawley Reveals if the Prequels Will Play a Role in the Show

Summary

• Alien series director Noah Hawley reveals whether the prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant will impact the story.
• Hawley has had discussions with Ridley Scott and will ignore the advanced “Apple Store technology” seen in the newer installments, preferring the retro-futurism of the first two films.
• The Alien series will serve as a prequel to the original movie, set three decades before Ripley’s encounter with the Xenomorph.

Fargo’s Noah Hawley, the director behind FX and Hulu’s upcoming Alien series, has revealed whether Ridley Scott’s prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and the changes to canon and the creation of the Xenomorph, will play a part in the show. The short answer is “No,” with Hawley revealing to KCRW’s The Business podcast that the series will instead hark back to original movie’s mythology and the fear surrounding “retro-futuristic technology.”

“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. And 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.”

Hawley is clearly planning for his Alien series to have much more in common with the first two movies, revealing that he has had discussions with Ridley Scott himself about the direction of the show and will ignore the “Apple Store technology” shown in the newer installments.

“You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because 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.”

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The Alien Series Will Be Set Decades Before the First Movie

alien

Release Date May 25, 1979

Writers Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett

Written and directed by Noah Hawley, the Alien series will act as a prequel to the original movie, taking place three decades before Ripley ever encountered the Xenomorph. While details largely remain under wraps at present, star David Rysdahl has teased Hawley’s bold vision.

“Noah [Hawley], in a similar fashion to Fargo, takes the [1979 Alien] movie and asks, “What’s the DNA of this? What’s the world perspective? What themes are we tackling? What was the original intent of this movie? Let me see if I can play with that in a new way.” So he’s doing a really interesting job of that on Alien, and it’s going to be a very different but very exciting view of what the original movie was.”

Starring Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, David Rysdahl, and Timothy Olyphant, FX’s Alien series is expected to premiere in the first half of 2025.

The Alien franchise will also evolve on the big screen, with Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez helming Alien: Romulus, which will reportedly be set between the events of 1979’s Alien, and the 1986 sequel. While Alien: Romulus was originally given a straight-to-streaming release, it will now be released theatrically on August 16, 2024.

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