Yesterday, it was announced that actress Isabela Mercer (“Rosaline”) would be joining fellow rising star Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown”) in the next big “Alien” feature film that is being spearheaded by filmmaker Fede Álvarez (“The Evil Dead”) and frequent writing partner Rodo Sayagues with Ridley Scott producing via his production company Scott Free. Well, even more names have been added to the call sheet before production. 20th Century Studios has not only confirmed the two actresses are indeed taking lead roles but are announcing more members of the cast with newcomers such as David Jonsson (“Industry”), Archie Renaux (“Shadow and Bone”), Spike Fearn (“The Batman”), and Aileen Wu (“Away from Home”) taking roles in the sci-fi horror pic. A relatively young cast compared to previous installments, which we’ve come to expect, having a mix of both veteran and fresh acting talent.
Of course, the basics of these films is a group of humans, usually off-world, end up coming face-to-face with the Xenomorphs. Called a perfect organism in the first movie, once it reaches the large warrior stage, it is tough to kill and has acid for blood, making Xenos quite the brutal killing machine in outer space when acid-eating through a ship’s haul can mean a complete disaster. The antagonists of the franchise, the evil intergalactic corporation Weyland-Yuanti, has been keen to add the creature to its bio-weapons division and chucking expendable crew/colonists into multiple suicide missions to recover it for their own dastardly plans.
The studio also provided the following logline for the movie:
A group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
More concrete plot details are still looming in the dark, waiting to be hatched, but it’s certainly interesting to see how young this cast is, and given the logline, they’re expected to be colonists on an unnamed planet. We saw colonists being the main crux of “Aliens” and “Alien: Covenant,” the former saw the entire colony of Hadley’s Hope either killed or captured alive to become hosts for a horde of Xenos, Newt being the lone survivor of those off-screen events and her father being the first victim as seen in the Special Edition version. One of the bigger questions is how exactly would this film fit into the larger franchise timeline?
It’s mentioned in the announcement that cameras will begin rolling next week on March 9 in Budapest, Hungary. A popular stage location that has been recently used because of its tax breaks and stellar local production crews that previously worked on “Blade Runner 2049” and the recent “Dune” movies. This will be the first feature film in the “Alien” franchise to be made specifically for a streaming service, as Hulu will land exclusivity as it did with the recent “Predator” prequel “Prey.” That one received a solid reaction from critics and audiences, leading to teases that a follow-up might be in the works.