Noah Hawley has run into several bouts of bad luck when it comes to developing new projects over the last couple of years, but it looks as though it’s all systems go for his Alien series, with the FX project set to be the first installment in the franchise set on Earth.
The filmmaker saw his plans for a Doctor Doom solo movie shelved in the wake of the Disney/Fox acquisition, while his Star Trek reboot was abandoned just as pre-production was starting to gain some serious momentum behind the scenes, and only yesterday it was announced his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut novel Cat’s Cradle wasn’t moving forward.
However, the brains behind Fargo and Legion is far too talented to let a couple of setbacks affect him, and teaming up with Ridley Scott to oversee the Xenomorph’s TV debut is tantalizing prospect. We don’t know much about the duo’s Alien other than the fact it’s definitely not going to be a Ripley story, but in a new interview FX president John Landgraf offered a couple of small but significant updates, including a potential premiere date.
“I think Noah’s very conscious of the fact that there’s a cinematic universe. I think you’ll also see that the show will feel like a part of the cinematic universe you’re familiar with in terms of Alien. I have optimism that that show may well roll out in 2023. It will probably roll out 2023, but we want to get it right.”
A lot of legacy movies and TV shows end up becoming too preoccupied with tying themselves into whatever property they’re spun off from, often to the detriment of the stories unfolding onscreen. That shouldn’t be the case with Alien, though, looking at the way Hawley reinvented the Coens’ Fargo and handled mutants in Legion, which was technically an X-Men adventure. Scott knows the mythology like the back of his hand, too, so we could be in store for something pretty special should the planned 2023 release date end up holding water.