In space nobody can hear you scream — but all bets are off back on Earth. With Fede Álvarez's Alien-meets-Aliens hybrid Alien: Romulus just weeks away from hitting cinemas, more news is starting to trickle through on Noah Hawley's upcoming xenomorph series. Per THR's reporting, Hawley has just wrapped filming on his long-gestating Alien series, whose title has now been revealed to be Alien: Earth.
“We are wrapped — just wrapped,” Hawley told THR, revealing that he's knees deep in the post-production process on the show, figuring out the series' VFX elements as Alien: Earth's long road to our screens finally nears its end. Between the pandemic and last year's SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, by the time Hawley's take on Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi franchise arrives (presumably sometime next year) it will have been half a decade since the project — which takes place in the late 21st century and marks the series' first Earth-set entry — was first announced.
"It’s crazy to think that it took three to five years to make the first season of Alien,” said Hawley, whose Fargo Season 5 just landed a mighty 15 Emmy nominations yesterday, in his chat with THR. "I think that I set myself a high bar dramatically, to turn what is one of the great horror and action franchises in cinema into something that takes more time with character and theme and does more than just create a horror story about trying to escape from death. And I’m very happy with how it turned out and the performances that that the actors gave and the work of all artisans. I can’t wait for people to see it.”
Little is known about the plot of Alien: Earth just yet, but we do know who'll be tangling with the perfect organism on the show. Among the series' stars are *deep breath* Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille and Adrian Edmondson. We'll find out who among them will prove themselves Ripley-worthy heroes and who's prime face hugger fodder when Alien: Earth makes first contact in 2025.