You’d have thought the idea of a Disney-backed Alien reboot would have left longtime fans of the classic sci-fi franchise feeling affronted, but the involvement of Noah Hawley and Ridley Scott in Hulu’s incoming episodic series has been enough to turn the tide of skepticism, even if Scott says it won’t be as good as his movies.
Hawley has largely built his career on subverting expectations on the small screen, whether it’s turning the Coens’ classic Fargo into a sprawling multi-season anthology series, or creating the existential and acclaimed X-Men spinoff Legion, even if his plans to apply the same approach to a Star Trek feature were ended when Paramount pulled the plug.
During an interview with Inverse, the filmmaker admitted that he knows exactly how his reputation was forged, revealing that he’s confident he can put a fresh coat of paint on a property that’s existed since 1979 in the only way he knows how.
“I’ve made a certain business out of reinvention. Alien is a fascinating story because it’s not just a monster movie; it’s about how we’re trapped between the primordial past and the artificial intelligence of our future, where both trying to kill us. It’s set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla. Someone’s going to monopolize electricity. We just don’t know which one it is.”
We don’t know much about the Alien show other than the fact it’ll be the first installment set on Earth, unless you count the Alien vs. Predator crossovers which Hawley quite clearly doesn’t, but he’s more than proven his chops when it comes to wringing gripping drama from a concept that generated quite a few raised eyebrows when it was initially announced.