The Alien franchise makes its long-awaited return to theaters this August with Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus, but we will soon get to see the Xenomorph (Xenomorphs?) terrorize the small screen for the very first time in Noah Hawley's FX series.
Updates on the project have been few and far between since the main cast was announced last year, but thanks to a new rumor doing the rounds online, we may have a little more to go on.
Though he stresses that this may not be the final title, insider Daniel Richtman has heard that the show is currently being referred to as "Alien: Neverland."
The series is believed to be set three decades before the events of Ridley Scott's 1979 classic and a few years before Prometheus, and will find the characters "caught in a conflict with the beginning of artificial intelligence and the competition among developers and users."
Not a lot to go on, but this does gel with details Hawley shared in a 2022 interview.
"It's set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla," Hawley tells Esquire. "Someone's going to monopolize electricity. We just don't know which one it is ... 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?"
"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," he continued. "As Sigourney Weaver said in that second movie, 'I don't know which species is worse. At least they don't [frick] each other over for a percentage.' Even if the show was 60% of the best horror-action on the planet, there's still 40% where we have to ask, 'What are we talking about it, beneath it all?' Thematically, it has to be interesting. It's humbling to get to play with the iconography of this world."
Though the premise certainly sounds interesting, fans who prefer the more claustrophobic chills of the original films might be disappointed to hear that the show will focus more on the advancements in AI and a race to create cutting edge androids (sorry, Bishop... artificial persons) than acid-secreting creatures chasing crew members through dimly-lit corridors.
The Xenomorph are expected to feature in some capacity, of course, but it doesn't sound like they're going to be the main focus.
Alien: Neverland(?) stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, David Rysdahl, Samuel Blenkin, Adarsh Gourav, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille and Adrian Edmondson.
A premiere date has yet to be announced.