Noah Hawley Sets Stage for FX’s Alien Series

The Alien franchise kind of fizzled out when Alien: Covenant released back in 2017, but FX is set to bring back the IP as a series with showrunner Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo). We don’t have a release date for the series yet, but Hawley gives us an idea of what direction the show will be going.

Talking to Esquire, Hawley explains that, besides the xenomorphs, his Alien series will also be taking a look at longevity and humans’ attempting to achieve immortality. He explains:

“It’s set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla… 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?”

Though the Alien franchise had started as a sci-fi horror movie with Ridley Scott, the sci-fi world has grown so much more, embracing its more philosophical themes with Prometheus back in 2012. Though Prometheus was a tad divisive, it looks like this series will be running with that existential ball, and we’ll be exploring some more heavy themes rather than just watching aliens take out humans with their inner mouths and acid blood.

“It’s ultimately a classic science fiction question: does humanity deserve to survive?” said Hawley, “As Sigourney Weaver said in that second movie, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t fuck 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.”

As of now, no release date has been set for FX’s Alien series.