Noah Hawley, perhaps best known for the shows Legion and Fargo, is currently developing a television series based on the Alien film franchise. While there isn’t much known about the upcoming series yet, Noah Hawley did reveal some interesting details about the show and its setting on Earth. He was also quick to explain that the Alien series won’t be including Ellen Ripley from the films.
Here’s what he specifically had to say about the Alien series via Vanity Fair, including why Ripley isn’t part of the story:
“What’s next for me, it looks like, is [an] Alien series for FX, taking on that franchise and those amazing films by Ridley Scott and James Cameron and David Fincher,” Hawley began.
He continued, “Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies. They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting.”
“It’s not a Ripley story,” Hawley further stated. “She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it. It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”
On a further note, he also added some of the social commentary that he hopes to include with the series based on the iconic horror film franchise:
“On some level it’s also a story about inequality. In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending [the people who have to do the dirty work]. So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us?”
These are certainly some interesting glimpses at the upcoming Alien series, and one can only imagine how the story is set to further develop. Hopefully we’ll have more details soon. In the meantime, the series is expected to be released on both FX and Hulu.