One of the most talked-about - not to mention divisive - elements of Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus was the introduction of another Xenomorph/human hybrid in the last act, and previously-released concept art has revealed that a number of different designs for the creature were considered.
Towards the end of the film, a pregnant and dying Kay (Isabela Merced) injects herself with the Rook android's Prometheus 5 formula to keep herself alive. Though she does survive (for a while), this ultimately results in her giving birth to a pretty damn terrifying hybrid, which kills its mother and very nearly manages to eliminate Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson) before being blasted into space.
Now, concept artist Dane Hallett has shared some more of his work to Instagram, and it seems the Offspring's original final form was going to look a lot more like a standard Xenomorph.
"After the project was shot, there was still plenty of wiggle room to experiment with The Offspring's final form in post production (VFX)," Hallett writes. "It went back and forth from remaining as is, to the winged version I shared earlier, to finally the Xenomorph, which I depicted here."
Check out the artwork at the link below.
UPDATE: The post appears to have been removed, so head over to AlienCovenant.com to take a look.
"Not a perfect organism, but despite an overreliance on retreading over old ground, Alien: Romulus does mark a thrilling return to form, and is surely destined to be ranked as the third-best Alien movie," we said in our review of Alien: Romulus.
"The sci-fi/horror-thriller takes the phenomenally successful Alien franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe."
The film stars Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), David Jonsson (Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Isabela Merced (The Last of Us), Spike Fearn (Aftersun), and Aileen Wu. Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) directs from a screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues (Don’t Breathe 2) based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.
Alien: Romulus is produced by Ridley Scott (Napoleon), who directed the original Alien and produced and directed the series’ entries Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Michael Pruss (Boston Strangler), and Walter Hill (Alien), with Fede Alvarez, Elizabeth Cantillon (Charlie’s Angels), Brent O’Connor (Bullet Train), and Tom Moran (Unstoppable) serving as executive producers.