I’m a huge fan of Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley – I’d even watch a show about me doing my taxes if he made it (and it’d probably be a Black Mirror-style horror tragedy). So when I heard Hawley was working with the iconic xenomorph, I thought I couldn’t be more excited for the show.
Turns out, I was wrong! Because Hawley isn’t just turning the Alien movies into a TV series, he’s giving the franchise the same bold, creative spin he brought to the X-Men universe in his groundbreaking sci-fi series Legion.
Also Read: ‘Alien: Earth’ Adds 11 To Cast Including Richa Moorjani, Karen Aldridge & Enzo Cilenti
What does that mean exactly? We’ll let Hawley explain it himself.
[Come] for the creatures, [stay] for the characters.
In a recent interview with Phil Nobile Jr. for the latest issue of Fangoria, Hawley shared that his goal for the upcoming Alien TV series on FX is for viewers to
He explained that to make this work, he approached the story by taking out the sci-fi elements during the creative process.
I did the same thing with Legion. Where I thought, ‘Take the superpowers out of it: what’s the show?’ And here we said, ‘Let’s take the monsters out for a minute and think about what the show’s about without monsters.’ Certainly any long-form story, for lack of a better phrase, becomes a soap opera in which you have characters at odds with each other and undermining each other and trying to save each other.
Hawley says
For anyone who doesn’t already know, Legion is a show based on characters loosely taken from the X-Men comics.
And if you read the “soap opera” quote above and didn’t think of Marvel’s most dysfunctional family, I’d seriously wonder if you’ve ever read any of the comics.
All the heroic and villainous idea have to be brought into this world, and then if we can make a really great show, and then add the monsters back in, now it escalates.
Hawley says of Alien: Earth
Just to be clear, fellow xenomorph fans – Hawley is definitely including monsters in this series. The ‘taking them out’ part only applies to how the writers planned the show. In fact, Hawley hinted in the interview that we might see more than just the classic Aliens in this series… or maybe even a brand-new kind of them.
I think that we’re doing some things with the creatures, that have not been done in the Alien franchise before.
Hawley tells his interviewer
Alien: Earth premieres on FX August 12.
Source: ThePopVerse