For the first time in what seems quite a few years, 20th Century Fox has issued a cease and desist order to Alien Identity, the Alien fan film that was in the works by Sonnet Realm Films and would have starred Elle Sonnet as Newt, Carrie Henn (the original Newt) as Anne Jordan, Ricco Ross (Pvt. Frost from Aliens) as Richard Frost.
Sonnet Realm Films issued this statement earlier today: “When we decided to make this Alien tribute film we anticipated from the beginning that this could happen. We were hoping that since Fox allowed other fan films in the Alien/Predator universes to be made that they would allow us to do so likewise. Although we wanted to make a tribute film spin off in the Alien universe reuniting original cast members to play new roles, we understand that this is Fox’s intellectual property and we want to respect their wishes. Therefore we peacefully withdraw from any further production of ALIEN IDENTITY, and will pursue our own original content, which I think is best anyway. We realize some of the fans will be disappointed by this, but we are happy that our talent from the tribute film will be coming on board taking the roles of original characters in our other Sci-Fi adventure TRIBORN, that we’ve been developing. We thank all the fans for their support and invite them to join us on another adventure.”
It’s a huge shame to hear that this has happened to Alien Identity and it has been a long time since we’ve heard of Fox issuing a cease and desist order to a fan project. In our experience this generally happens when a fan product is becoming too similar to an official production in the works, in this case Alien 5.
This is further emphasized by a comment made by the Alien Identity team on their Facebook: “They were worried our storyline would confuse the fans for Alien 5.”
The current cast and crew of Alien Identity are moving forward with a new science-fiction project called Triborn. If you’re interested in that make sure you pop on Facebook and give them a Like to follow the project.
