The Alien universe is growing at warp speed.
Not only is Noah Hawley reinventing the 1979 classic horror/sf film into a TV series for FX on Hulu for a 2023 debut, but now esteemed genre filmmaker Fede Alvarez will write and direct a standalone Alien movie for a Hulu premiere, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
And, just to close the circle a bit more, Ridley Scott–who directed the original Alien–will produce the new movie for 20th Century Studios under his Scott Free banner.
The storyline for this new film is being kept under wraps at this time, but it is described as unconnected to the previous movies. The idea so appealed to the suits at 20th Century that they picked it up “purely on the strength of Fede’s pitch,” according to division president Steve Asbell, who called it “a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”
Asbell added that Hulu will offer a good landing place for the film, seeing that it isn’t a movie “that has to be all things to all people with those gargantuan budgets. They get to be what they are. And this is closer to its genre roots.”
Speaking of genre roots, Alvarez would seem to be the ideal choice for the director’s chair. His horror resumé includes writing and directing the Evil Dead remake, Don’t Breathe and co-writing and producing the recent Netflix remake Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The original Alien–directed by Scott from a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon–follows the crew of the doomed space tug Nostromo and its deadly encounter with the biggest, ugliest critter ever–the Xenomorph. The film earned more than $106 million on an $11-million budget and spawned sequels, novels, comic books and enough collectibles to fill a cargo bay.
Keep reading Horror News Network for the next update on the expanding Alien landscape.
