It’s difficult to believe that H.R. Giger’s iconic acid-blooded, double-mouthed, chest-burstin’ Xenomorph marks her 40th birthday this year. With the big screen franchise currently on ice after the critical and commercial failure of Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant (which wasn’t that bad), Fox are re-releasing the original Alien into cinemas in a gorgeous new restoration as well as announcing a number of projects based around the universe established in the awesome 2014 game Alien: Isolation.
The title followed Ellen Ripley’s daughter Amanda as she faced down a marauding Alien on board a space station, using nothing but her wits, engineering skills and bravery to triumph over the creature. Or at least, that was the theory. In my play-through, Amanda spent most of her time whimpering in a locker before being dragged out and violently devoured. While the game may not be receiving a full sequel anytime soon, Fox has seized upon its concept as the launchpad for three projects, teased with the tagline: “Read. Play. Watch.”
‘Read’ is represented by the Alien: Resistance comic book, ‘Play’ by the underwhelming Alien: Blackout mobile game and now it seems that ‘Watch’ refers to an animated series. Bloody Disgusting are reporting that this will be a seven-episode run worked on by Axis Animation and may be released online as soon as this April. Right now, there are no further details on what it could offer, but the conclusion of the game was so open-ended that it’d be easy to work a sequel into it.
Animated projects featuring the Xenomorph have been surprisingly rare in the franchise. The closest we had was the deeply misguided Operation: Aliens Saturday morning cartoon show, which would’ve tied in with the 90s Kenner toy line. Leaving aside the wisdom of making a children’s series about a creature whose life cycle revolves around exploding out of people’s guts and whose head is designed to look like a penis, it’s probably for the best that all we have are some production stills.
Let’s hope that the Alien: Isolation show fares a little better, eh?