The “Alien” franchise is a collection of bizarre behind-the-scenes stories that nearly saw Sigourney Weaver miss out on the three sequels for various reasons. But James Cameron has revealed that when he originally wrote “Aliens,” with the help of longtime producers Walter Hill and David Giler, he thought the actress was attached to the sequel. While he was assumed 20th Century Fox had an option to bring her back, and they even insisted they did, that actually wasn’t the case. This led to some tough negotiations, given that Weaver was now in a position to ask for more money, a million dollars, to be exact, not a tiny chunk of change in the mid-1980s.
Cameron talked to GQ about the tough road trying to get Weaver signed on for “Aliens” and the way her agents were playing hardball. He thought she should get what her agents were asking for, but 20th Century Fox wasn’t budging. So he told the story about lying to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent about this idea to rewrite the script and remove the Ripley character from the film to retool as a project for his “Terminator” actor, knowing fully well, the news would get back to Weaver and her agent, putting pressure on her to sign before hypothetically getting written out of the movie.
“I called up Lou Pitt, Arnold’s agent, and I said, ‘Lou, we’re kind of over this. So, we’ve decided that we really like the story and all the Marine Corps characters and the world we’ve created and everything. And really, we’ve thought about it, and we really just don’t need Sigourney,” he recalled. “I’ve created all these characters, and my pride of authorship tells me I should go ahead with this, and we’ll just cut her out of it, and we’ll just cut her character out of it. We won’t recast it; I’ll just rewrite it. So, I’m going to start on that tonight.”
“Now, did I have any intention of doing that whatsoever? No, not at all. But I happen to know that Lou is at the same agency as Sigourney’s agent, who was in New York. And I knew that the second he hung up with me, he called him and said, ‘Sign Sigourney now.’ And guess what? The deal was done in 12 hours after that. So, I never wrote a word of that hypothetical story that I said I was going to do, that I had no intention of writing anyway. Anyway, it worked, and Sigourney got her million bucks, and everyone was happy.”
Cameron and Weaver are still friends today, having worked together on 2009’s massive hit “Avatar” along with having the actress return for a string of sequels playing one of the new/young Na’vi characters after Dr. Grace Augustine died in the first installment. The interesting part is this wouldn’t be the last time Schwarzenegger’s name was loosely involved with the “Alien” franchise as there had been attempts to make an early version of “Alien vs. Predator” with him in the lead role during the 1990s (after not being able to agree on a “Predator” sequel return). The first incarnation of “Alien 5” (developed by Ridley Scott and Cameron) almost attempted to pair Weaver with the action star as well.
Luckily, it all worked out with the movie making a bunch of money and Weaver shockingly landing a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the sci-fi actioner.
You can watch that full chat with Cameron below, where he talks about the backstory of a number of his films.