We’re less than two months away from the premiere of “Alien: Earth.” As the prequel/spinoff series from show creator Noah Hawley is gearing up for a streaming debut next month and we have some fantastic new images revealing the bulk of the main and supporting cast of characters tasked to recover a crashed ship housing a slew of dangerous alien organic life, including the Xenomorph, the beloved sci-fi horror critter at the heart of the franchise launched back in 1979 by director Ridley Scott.
A new in-depth profile on “Alien: Earth” from Vanity Fair not only includes those aforementioned images (See below), but we’re also learning some plot details, such as that the grandmother of Sandra Yi Sencindiver‘s Yutani commissioned the doomed vessel as she believes that the vast menagerie of other specimens on the ship is her birthright property.
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That’s not it, as Hawley is planting seeds that, down the line, likely after multiple seasons, we could see how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation directly influenced or directed the Nostromo to LV-426, leading to the events of that original film having a more direct connection the greater film canon as the first season takes place before the events of “Alien.”
“I don’t yet know, in terms of the series from beginning to end, how much time is going to pass or where we’re going to end up,” Hawley said of the show connecting to the original “Alien” movie. “But I do know that at a certain point, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is going to divert the Nostromo to that planet…We have the opportunity to maybe see what was happening on the other side of that phone call.”
This idea isn’t new, as Ian Holm‘s Ash reveals the company was behind their exploration of the derelict ship and when Sigourney Weaver‘s Lt. Ellen Ripley tries to explain that Weyland-Yutani gave them the orders in “Aliens,” the group of suits all acted like she was crazy only for Paul Reiser‘s company executive Carter Burke to do the same thing himself. However, on a much larger scale, killing a majority of the colonists of Hadley’s Hope using them as expendable assets to retrieve the potential bio-weapon, exposing the colonists to the Xenomorphs without warning them of the danger.
Perhaps, this vision for the connective tissue between “Alien: Earth” and the films is why Scott was recently musing that his desire to work on the franchise was waning. If the show ultimately ends up gobbling up ideas from his never-made third prequel “Alien: Awakening,” it could explain the reasoning behind the filmmaker’s talk of moving on to other things.
We wouldn’t be at all that surprised if elements Scott was trying to put together (Scott wanted to make a lot more than three prequel films and boasted about a production bible full of movie concepts developed by the writers of “Alien: Covenant” that could have seen story beats lead directly into the events of “Alien”) end up cannibalized by the new series.
On the film front, “Predator: Badlands” is expected to become the first film from the solo “Predator” franchise to incorporate the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, as there are hints that the off-world colony and Elle Fanning‘s character Thia, a possible android, featured in the new movie have direct links. That reveal has sparked renewed interest in fandom for an authentic version of the crossover “Aliens vs Predator,” which ultimately might be the direction 20th Century Studios is going here.
Check out that wave of new exclusive photos from “Alien: Earth” below, as the series is set to debut on Hulu and Disney+ on August 12.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
