Since picking up the IP as part of the 20th Century Fox acquisition, The Walt Disney Company has wasted little time in putting the Alien brand to use. The comic book license is already up and running at Marvel, and it was announced this past December that Ridley Scott is teaming with Fargo and Legion creator Noah Hawley to bring the franchise to the small screen for the very first time with a live-action TV series at FX.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Hawley has confirmed the reports that the show will take place on Earth, and as such is “not a Ripley story”. Instead, he reveals, the show is “on some level, about inequality” and will seemingly offer a glimpse into the shady goings on of corporate giants like Weyland-Yutani.
“One of the things that I love about the first movie is how ’70s a movie it is, and how it’s really this blue collar space-trucker world in which Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are basically Waiting for Godot,” said Hawley. “They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation. The second movie is such an ’80s movie, but it’s still about grunts. Paul Reiser is middle management at best. So, it is the story of the people you send to do the dirty work.”
“In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending them,” he continues. “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? There’s that great Sigourney Weaver line to Paul Reiser where she says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t fuck each other over for a percentage.'”
The as-yet-untitled series is described as “a scary thrill ride set not too far in the future” and is said to be looking to combine the horror sensibilities Ridley Scott’s 1979 original with the action-orientated approach of James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens.
SEE ALSO: New concept art from Neill Blomkamp’s unmade Alien 5 unearthed
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