The (Almost) Resurrection of Rebecca “Newt” Jorden

If you were an Alien fan in the late 1980s or early 1990s clamoring to find out what happened to Ellen Ripley, Corporal Dwayne Hicks and Rebecca “Newt” Jorden after they climbed into the safety of the Sulaco’s cryotubes at the end of Aliens, Dark Horse Comics had you covered. In July of 1988 the first issue of what would later become known as Aliens: Book One hit comic book store shelves and took us years into the future, and introduced us to a post traumatic trauma inflicted and institutionalized adult Newt.

Following the horrific events at Hadley’s Hope on LV-426, Newt suffered frequent and debilitating nightmares. The solution? Lobotomy. Upon learning of Newt’s impending medical procedure, a disgraced and equally traumatized Dwayne Hicks was having absolutely none-of-that and broke Newt out of the psychiatric institution.

Newt would join Hicks and a squad of synthetic Colonial Marines on a mission to retrieve a Xenomorph sample from a recently discovered Hiveworld. En route, their ship would be hijacked by agents of the Bionational Corporation. A hidden Newt jumped into action and rescued Hicks. She would go on to become an important figure in mankind’s struggle for survival against the Alien infestation that had spread across the surface of Earth.

Eventually, Newt would do for a young survivor named Amy what Ellen Ripley had done for her, going off mission to rescue the little girl from the depths of a Xenomorph hive. With the release of 1992’s Alien 3 and the devestating demise of the young Rebecca Jorden, those adventures of Hicks and Newt would be republished with the characters renamed Wilks and Billie.

For a good portion of the audience who watched Dr Clemens tell an emotionally crippled Ellen Ripley that Newt had drown in her cryotube, this was an affront to everything that James Cameron had done with Aliens. And despite those early comics seeing an eventual republish with the original names restored, as well as a possible revival in Neil Blomkamp’s aborted Alien 5 and a thankfully deleted cameo at the end of The Predator, Rebecca “Newt” Jorden has remained firmly on the other side of that “veil of tears” when it comes to the big screen.

But there was a time in the mid-1990s when Newt’s untimely demise was about to be undone. I would wager that most Alien fans are unaware of this footnote in the development of Alien Resurrection where we would have seen a cloned Newt, rather than Ripley, resurrected to combat our favorite acid-blooded extraterrestrial Xenomorph XX121.

I think it’d be a safe bet, not just because the film’s lack of popularity within the fandom leading to less exploration of it, but because until relatively recently there was just so little known about this direction that Alien Resurrection could have taken.

For the longest time the most significant information on this stage of Alien Resurrection’s development came from two sources. One was the book Dissecting Aliens, the other an interview with the then 20^th Century Fox executive Jorge Saralegui in the 35^th “special” issue of Starburst which was published in 1995.

Saralegui was the Executive Vice-President at 20^th Century Fox who was responsible for conceiving and developing the fourth Alien film. A fan of the Alien series long before he came to work in the film industry, Saralegui was intent on bringing Alien bursting back onto the big screen.

Talking to Starburst’s Pat Jankiewicz, Saralegui explained that as he had thought Sigourney Weaver would have no interest in returing to the Alien franchise, the original intention for Alien 4 had been to continue the films with the resurrection of none other than Rebecca “Newt” Jorden.

“It was a matter of convincing [the studio] to give it a shot. At the time, Ripley had died and it was Sigourney’s idea to kill her, so we had no intention of bringing her back, we didn’t think she’d want to come back.  We had the notion of having Newt cloned […] The people at Fox liked the idea enough to say ‘Okay, why don’t you start working on it and find a writer?’ The first and only person I thought of was Joss Whedon. This is after he wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the movie script, not the TV series.”

The second mention of the Newt incarnation of Alien Resurrection comes from Dissecting Aliens, a book written by John L Flynn and originally published in 1995, with a later re-issue in 2007, where Joss Whedon is quoted as saying that:

“There has also been talk of bringing an older Newt back instead of Ripley. Their arcs are different. With Newt you have a blank page, but, with Ripley, that page has been written on so many times that you really have to find something new to say.”

Alien vs. Predator Galaxy reached out to author John L Flynn to ask if this quote came from one of the interviews Flynn had conducted for the book, but he told us it was sourced from elsewhere that couldn’t be remembered after all these years. So it’s entirely possible there’s another interview from Joss Whedon hidden in a genre magazine from the mid-90s with more little nuggets in it.

David Thomson’s Alien Quartet, published in 1998, also briefly discusses this, offering a little more detail in that Newt’s clone would be a “grown woman.”

Since then, this part of Alien Resurrection’s history has remained largely untouched.  Titan’s Alien: The Archive made brief mention of a 30-page treatment without even referring to Newt– just “another female character in the lead.” There was a similarly vague passing mention in David McIntee’s Beautiful Monsters. There is absolutely no mention of it in the Alien Quadrilogy/Alien Anthology behind-the-scenes documentary One Step Beyond: Making Alien Resurrection, nor the film’s commentary.

Fast-forward to July 2014 when Joss Whedon: Geek King of the Universe, a biography of Joss Whedon written by Amy Pascale was published. Contained within the 450 pages of that biography was a chapter devoted to Whedon’s time working on Toy Story and Alien Resurrection, and within it a healthy amount of details about the early days of the then simply titled Alien 4 when the story was focused on Newt.

Though he was questioning whether audiences would even be interested in another Alien film following the response to Alien 3, Jorge Saralegui wanted to bring Alien back and he had to do it without Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Ripley. Saralegui’s solution? Bring back Newt.

“Although Newt died at the beginning of Alien 3, Saralegui’s idea was that she would be cloned because of the survival skills she demonstrated in Aliens, and would be used by Ripley’s former employer to track down the alien for their own research. The cloned Newt, in effect, would become a Buffy-like character – a young girl imbued with special skills and strengths to take out a particular enemy.”

Alien vs. Predator Galaxy reached out to Jorge Saralegui to find out more about what he had planned for the resurrected Rebecca “Newt” Jorden and he graciously answered our questions.

As quoted above/earlier in Geek King of the Universe, Newt was to be resurrected due to the Monster Maze skills she’d demonstrated during the infestation of Hadley’s Hope. It went further than that though, as Saralegui explained to Alien vs. Predator Galaxy, it was the Company’s intention that she also serve as a “scout” as they tried to obtain Xenomorph specimens from LV-426 – or a different location as this was not settled on at this point during development.

Unlike the finished Alien Resurrection, the treatment was not set in the far flung future, but would instead have taken place a few years after Alien 3.

Speaking further about Newt’s depiction in this incarnation of Alien Resurrection, Saralegui told Alien vs. Predator Galaxy that the cloned Newt would face strong contempt from the crew that she would be guiding due to her cloned origins. Newt’s focus was on her desire to finish Ellen Ripley’s work from Alien 3 and eliminate the Aliens.

“Newt’s deep humanity, despite being a clone, was the thematic core [of the treatment]. You can see how some of this was transposed to both the Call and Ripley characters (in contrast to the military and the smugglers) in Alien Resurrection.”

Once given the greenlight to begin developing Alien 4, Saralegui sought out Joss Whedon to begin work. Saralegui explained to Alien vs. Predator Galaxy that at this point in time, he had worked with Joss Whedon several times previously and following Whedon’s success with the writing and sale of the spec script “Suspension” and his revision work on “Speed,” Whedon was the first person Saralegui thought of to work on Alien 4.

Whedon wrote a thirty-page treatment that found an adult clone of Newt leading a crew in search of Xenomorph specimens. Carrie Henn, the actress who originally portrayed Newt in Aliens, would have barely been entering her 20s at this point in time, and had also had retired from acting. So, if Carrie Henn wouldn’t be reprising her role, who would 20^th Century Fox have turned to?

Saralegui recalled to Alien vs. Predator Galaxy that while he and Whedon had been developing the initial treatment of Alien 4, he had been interested in Patricia Arquette taking on the role. The actress, who would have been in her late 20s, had recently seen success with her performances in True Romance and Ed Wood.

According to David Thomson in The Alien Quartet, Bridget Fonda had also been considered to step into Carrie Henn’s shoes. At this stage in her career, Fonda would have been in her early 30s and had appeared in many films including roles in, amongst many others, The Godfather Part 3 and Army of Darkness.

Without the Xenomorph DNA mixed into her genetic make-up, the cloned Newt wouldn’t have had the same genetic memory as Ripley 8 would. However, she would have inherited some of her previous experiences “on an intuitive basis,” in addition to flashbacks triggered by her return “to a familiar hostile environment.”

Saralegui couldn’t recall if he or Whedon had developed any specific set pieces at this point in Alien 4’s development, but he did remember that they hadn’t yet discussed if they would introduce new variations of the Alien, or if they would return to Derelict – though Saralegui would have certainly been interested in taking the franchise back to the enegmatic ship.

“It would have made for an excellent sequence — I never tire of considering that vessel’s possibilities.”

Saralegui and Whedon turned in the treatment and while the other studio executives at 20^th Century Fox were excited to revisit and reboot the Alien franchise, they were hesitant to do so without the leading lady Sigourney Weaver involved. According to The Geek King of the Universe, Joss Whedon “rebelled” at the thought of resurrecting Ellen Ripley instead of Newt.

Likewise Jorge Saralegui was disappointed to abandon the resurrection of Rebecca “Newt” Jorden as like Whedon had explained in Dissecting Aliens, she was more of a blank canvas than Ellen Ripley. As he explained to Alien vs. Predator Galaxy, Saralegui came around to the idea of returning to Ellen Ripley though.

“Cloning Ripley instead made sense, and making her part-alien was a masterstroke by Joss that made us both fall in love with that version of Ripley. I have to say that I’ve never worked with a more dedicated actor than Sigourney in that film. She could have phoned it in, but worked every single day to bring out what was new about Ripley.”

Joss Whedon turned in his first complete draft of the script on the 14^th of September 1995, and the now titled Alien Resurrection would take a completely different direction and the character of Newt would remain in the grave.

In the following years, Newt nearly escaped this fate a couple of further times. Ignoring the events of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, we know that Neil Blomkamp’s Alien 3 considered Newt’s return. On Alien Day 2016,  Blomkamp shared a piece of concept art by Callum Alexander Watts depicting an older Newt with Carrie Henn’s likeness.

This is the only glimpse of Newt from all of the concept art from Blomkamp’s Alien 3 that we’ve seen, so even if she did return it does not seem likely she would have featured in the narrative in any prominent way.

Rebecca “Newt” Jorden also very nearly appeared at the end of the much maligned The Predator in one of multiple endings that were shot showing different contents within the pod at the end of the film. In the finished film it was the Predator Killer suit, but they also shot other versions which included either Ellen Ripley or Newt in cryostasis within the pod.

Actress Breanna Watkins portrayed both Newt – and Ellen Ripley – in this brief time traveling cameo. Back in 2021 Alien vs. Predator Galaxy had the opportunity to chat to Breanna Watkins about her experience filming, where she explained that:

“A whole backstory was explained to me for each of my two endings… however I believe that the franchise owners may still want to have the option to use those backstories so I shouldn’t really go into specifics of what I was told, but I can say that time travel, cloning and genetic enhancement was involved. The backstory did vary depending on which ending they were going to use.”

Watkins later explained to Alien vs. Predator Galaxy that Newt’s presence in the past was related to her being sent back in time to avoid a major calamity or conflict in the future that involved both the Aliens and Predators. As she climbed out of the pod, her face-hugger inspired breathing apparatus removed, she would have warned the assembled Stargazer personnel about the impending danger and directed a call to arms at Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn McKenna.

Had the powers that be chosen to release the film with the Newt ending, Breanna Watkin’s may have later returned to reprise the role again if any future films continued the storyline being setup.

“They filmed me full on with my face as Rebecca Jorden, and there was some discussion about the future potential of the character to be continued in other crossover movies, along with my possible involvement with that if they decided to go with that ending.”

However, this alternate ending was not used, and aside from several behind-the-scenes photos, this footage has never been seen in its entirety.

Though we didn’t get to see Newt return in to the big screen, she has reappeared alive and well in the Dark Horse and Audible adaptations of William Gibson’s alternate Alien 3 script, released in 2018 and 2019 respectively.  Newt was voiced by Mairead Doherty, who was reprising her performance from the Audible adaptation of Alien: River of Pain which depicted the fall of Hadley’s Hope.

We hope you’ve all enjoyed this exploration of the time that Alien Resurrection may have resurrected Newt! If you come across any other articles or interviews with further details about this treatment, please let us know! Maybe someday that treatment will make its way online, but until that day, I hope we’ve done a good job with collating the best intel!