ALIEN: ROMULUS Director Used Original ALIEN Concept Art to Help Bring His Vision to Life

Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez had a particular vision in mind for his sci-fi horror movie as he wanted it to look like Ridley Scott’s original Alien film.

In fact, he wanted the movie's visual look to mimic Alien so badly that they went to great lengths to make it happen, including digging out original concept art and comparing his film to Scott’s.

Alvares shared with SFX magazine: "We have a scan of the original 35mm print of Alien and we put it on the screen side by side with ours.

“Obviously that would do nothing if we didn’t do our job on the day," he adds, and then said that the team has to light the set in a certain way to reflect the color-grading of the first movie.

The movie is set between Alien and Aliens and when talking about the visuals, the filmmaker continued: "Visually, half of the work is that: just making sure that it looks like you’re in that universe."

To help achieve that, they looked at original concept art from Ron Cobb for inspiration. Alvares said: "We dug out a lot of concept art that was done for those movies that wasn’t even used, and figured out a way to be inspired by that and put it in this movie."

I love that they put in the time to achieve this look that they wanted for the film, and it looks like all that attention to detail will show.

In the film, while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

The movie stars Cailee Spaeny, Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (Aftersun), and newcomer Aileen Wu.

Alvarez is directing from his script written by Rodo Sayagues. Ridley Scott is also a producer on the movie along with Michael Pruss (Boston Strangler) for Scott Free, with Brent O’Connor (Bullet Train), Elizabeth Cantillon (Persuasion) and Tom Moran (The Donut King) serving as executive producers.

Alien: Romulus will hit theaters on August 16, 2024.