With both The Last Duel and House of Gucci due out in the next few months, the Independent recently sat down with Sir Ridley Scott to talk about a multitude of different topics including his upcoming films, what’s on the horizon for him, streaming and naturally, Alien.
They don’t talk about Alien too much, but Ridley did comment on the box office decline of Alien: Covenant compared to Prometheus, again attributing it to his belief that the Alien is “cooked.”
He refuses point blank to tell me anything about Gladiator 2 – “No! No!” he cries– but he’s more vocal about the Alien franchise, which he resurrected with 2012’s origin story Prometheus. “I never showed an alien in it” – it still made $404 million at the box office – “and the studio … said, ‘See, it didn’t do so well!’ Really?” He returned with 2017’s Alien: Covenant, “put the aliens back in there”, and the film made much less: $240m worldwide. “When you’ve got a marvellous beast, it does wear out and you have to actually think again.”
More recently Ridley Scott’s involvement with any future Alien project has been less certain, especially following the Disney buy-out. Back in 2020 Ridley Scott did say he was continuing to work on a new prequel film. When Noah Hawley’s Alien series was first announced, it was reported that FX was in talks with Sir Ridley Scott to executive produce.
I imagine the below quote is a little tongue in cheek, but during the interview Scott did throw in a little dig about Hawley’s upcoming series.
The franchise is now being rebooted as a TV series by Noah Hawley (who successfully turned Fargo into a long-running show). Wherever they go, whatever they do, “It’ll never be as good as the first one,” he grins. “That’s what I’ll say.”
Alien vs. Predator Galaxy can confirm that those talks were completed, and despite his comments above Scott is onboard as executive producer for the show. Thanks to seattle24 and whos_nick for the news.
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/noah-hawley-fargo-alien-star-trek-1235646824/
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It's also wild to think back on just how long the gestation period of this show has been, going back to the original rumors of it pre-Disney acquisition of Fox, like Hawley talks about there.
From the Vanity Fair piece a couple posts above, it's nice to hear that even though the series seems to be very indebted to Alien and Aliens, it doesn't seem like Hawley has any interest whatsoever in making a product that is The Force Awakens to Alien's A New Hope.
As you said, you had a partner in Landgraf who said, "Make your version of Alien." So, what have been the challenges of doing that?
There was a challenge early on simply because this process started in a pre-Disney Fox, and then became a Disney Fox, which was Bob Iger, and then Bob Chapek and now Iger again, and there was definitely a moment in which it felt like, on a corporate level, the people who make the creative decisions are different than the people who make the financial decisions and there was a lot of internal pressure that the show should do a specific thing or not do a specific thing.
How did that get communicated?
It was doubt. There was an element for my partners of having to navigate an org chart that was trying to take some creative power up to the next level in a way that makes it harder for artists. That said, it was temporary. We're not in that moment now, but I think that was part of what extended the development period.
What is Ridley Scott's involvement in the TV show? Having directed the film, is he involved?
I mean, are the Coens involved in Fargo? Let's just say, I've probably had more conversations with Ridley than I've had with Joel and Ethan. Scott Free [Productions] is producing Alien and Ridley is making two or three movies a year is basically how that's working. I mean, Ridley has been an amazing collaborator to the degree that I can pick his brain about all of his thoughts, processes, decisions and the things that he's learned. And I try to keep him [in the loop] and send him material so that he feels respected and included. But also, he's doing his thing.
You're currently working on a series version of Alien, which I assume is also pretty time-consuming.
We had to put things on hold because of the strikes, but we'll now pick back up in January and try to get it on the air in 2025.
All the studios are eager for IP and reboots, but you just kind of take the shell and fill it with your own inventions.
Under the auspices of making a Coen Bros. movie, I've gotten to make 5-to-10-hour movies about America. And under the auspices of making Alien, I get to tell a story that's very much my own story. It borrows some elements from Ridley Scott's movie and James Cameron's movie, and yet, you know, there's no version of it in which I'm rehashing their stories. To make something great in television, you need multiple hours. It has to be bigger and more sprawling and have more elements and play out in time-released story with themes that are meaningful.
From Esquire:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a38591125/noah-hawley-anthem-alien-fargo-interview/
Bingo.
I would expect a lot more of synth-children that are in over their heads getting violently decimated by aliens. You are free to utilize the otherwise taboo shock of innocent and naive children getting violently murdered if their bodies are adult and their blood is white.
I would bet any amount of money that there will be a seemingly heroic moment where one of these child warriors rises up to the occasion to fight an alien, only to instantly die in a brutal, punchliney fashion.
http://reel3.com/reassessing-alien-sexuality-and-the-anxieties-of-men/
I have been following his work diligently and he is lately very invested in a childs response to crisis, and how that response can both save and doom us. Its obvious he will be exploring these exact themes in the show. His recent novel Anthem includes a youth suicide epidemic thats presented as a mythical plague from a fantasy novel and the protagonists are this Fellowship of The Ring band of teenagers that meet in an anxiety clinic. The villain in their quest is literally Jeffrey Epstein lol, who is described as The Wizard. Different responses to existential angst in times of crisis are explored amongst the youth: some teenage boys have militarized and call themselves The Tyler Durdens, there is a 14 year old boy that has convinced himself that he is Randall Flagg, other kids have childishly ingenious and/or naive solutions to the crisis etc.
I think this will be the core thing this show will explore: the spectrum of a childs responses to a world-ending threat. How some grow up early and others refuse to grow up. How the childishness of some provides solutions the mature cant see, where others turn to violently denialist juvenile narcissism. Peter Pan and Wendy in the face of extinction. No wonder Noah indicated he is making this show for (or maybe about) his 15 year old daughter.
Most of the cast are the lost boys, in this case 10 year olds in synth warrior bodies, Boy Kavalier is Peter Pan and I suspect his manipulative advisor Atom Ein will be Captain Hook, our villain.
weyland-Yutani shits the bed and a bunch of xenos make their Maginot ship crash into Prodigy City.
There will be some corporate espionage and intrigue between Prodigy Corporation and Weyland-Yutani (that want to retrieve their assets back, but Prodigy won't let them), which will give us an excuse to explore and see what Prodigy is working on (wendy and all the other conscious transfer/transhuman experiments).
Meanwhile, we will see the blue collar workers of Prodigy City deal with the aftermath and consequences of a giant ship crashing into their city and the spread of the new Xeno colony (after their eggs get scrambled and lost due to the crash).
The Xenos will make their way to the top and all hell will break loose.
The season/series will end with Prodigy City being either nuked or destroyed by some other means of keeping what happened with the xenos a secret, with some potentials survivors (wendy) leaving the city.
Always thought it was:
Spoiler
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The plot.
One of you has to say, "What's in the box?!"
I have tickets for another movie in town that night but may need to change some plans around 👀
https://tickets.austintheatre.org/10231/10239
Earth 2 ala Battlestar Galactica (jk!😅)
All leading to the nuclear annihilation of prodigy city
(how else can it end?)
That's because you're a toxic fan.
<Blain>Just like me.</Blain>
But with Prometheus, it tried to answer something that we really wanted to know. With this tv series....i don't know what the problem the writers are trying to have answers to. Maybe its just trying to fill a void where the synthetic people have left with us concerning Blade Runner and the Alien Mythos. I don't know, just taking a long shot with that. The trailer will need to ask it all and tie it all to "Xenomorph" territory as the imagery is trying to communicate. Otherwise, there isn't much to that concept art of that xenomorph. The franchise has tons of nonsensical concept art already.
I don't love everything I'm hearing, but I do remain genuinely curious about what I'm hearing.
Only time will tell, really.
So much that we've heard sounds promising, and so much of what we've heard sounds terrible.
Well, that's a good reason to be excited for that one
https://s11.gifyu.com/images/SgJGy.gif
gonna be a very expensive clownshow.
oh well. Looking forward to Fede's movie, probably gonna be the last one in the series for a few decades.
That more or less sums up my expectations for this. That's why Prey's success caught me completely off guard.
Give it to Dan the Man. I say.