Hulu’s ‘Alien’ Sequel Adds New Cast & Sets Filming Date
Get ready for more Xenomorph action – Fede Alvarez’s Alien movie is set to start filming soon with a cast of folks you’ve seen recently.
Director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) and co-writer Rodo Sayagues’ reboot takes an all-new path with all new characters. It is not going to connect to Ridley Scott’s prequel series (personally, I think that’s wise), or the series Noah Hawley is working on. Expect a space horror that’s tense, violent, and gory. Something that harks back to the 1979 film that terrified audiences.
But this time, it’ll be space colonizers rather than space truckers or space marines. From a recent press release…
“In this ninth entry in the immensely popular and enduring film series, a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
Production begins March 9th with a cast of young actors. Cailee Spaeny (The Craft: Legacy), Isabella Merced (Sweet Girl), David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), and newcomer Aileen Wu will be trying not to become xenomorph food.
The untitled movie is going straight to Hulu like Prey and Hellraiser did. It’s part of 20th Century Studios’ plan to release more movies on the platform. The plan also allows Disney to take advantage of its vast number of not-family-friendly IPs. Both did well for the streamer, but it left many fans (myself included) disappointed that their favorite franchises didn’t get big-screen releases. We’ve seen other streaming projects get elevated to theaters – maybe this will get that treatment.
There’s no release date set, but based on the upcoming filming date I expect we’ll see it next year.
Noah Hawley’s Alien Series
The movie isn’t the only Alien franchise project in the works. The Noah Hawley-led limited series is still happening. Hawley is known for the trippy adaptation of Legion that aired on FX a few years back. All the scripts are in and it’s set to start shooting this year. The series is a prequel but will be set closer to the timeline of the first two movies in the franchise. Casting hasn’t been announced.
Noah Hawley via FX
One thing that will definitely set this series apart from the rest of the franchise: it’s set on earth. Hawley told Esquire…
“It’s set on Earth of the future… In the movies, we have this Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which is clearly also developing artificial intelligence. But what if there are other companies trying to look at immortality in a different way, with cyborg enhancements or transhuman downloads? Which of those technologies is going to win? It’s ultimately a classic science fiction question: does humanity deserve to survive?”
That really broadens the possibilities and the stakes. There’s been a thought in the fandom that Blade Runner and Alien are in the same universe–maybe this series will make that happen, at least thematically.
