Director Jeff Nichols Offers Details on His ALIEN NATION Remake and Says it Will Be Epic

A couple of years ago it was announced that Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special) would write and direct a remake of the classic sci-fi crime 80s film Alien Nation. The filmmaker has been hard at work developing this film and it’s something that he’s really proud of and very excited about doing.

The original movie starred James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, and Terence Stamp. The story is set in Los Angeles in 1991, “humans live alongside extraterrestrial humanoid beings whose spaceship crash landed three years earlier. This coexistence is not always harmonious, as exemplified by segregated slums and the uneasy partnership of police detective Matthew Sykes (Caan) with new humanoid partner Sam Francisco (Patinkin). However, the pair begin to overcome their differences as they investigate a slum drug ring led by the slippery William Harcourt (Stamp).”

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, but I really enjoyed it! Nichols is a great filmmaker and I’ve been curious to know what exactly he’s planning for his remake and in a recent interview with /Film he offers and update and says that the film is going to be epic. Here’s what he had to say:

“So I’ve been working on Alien Nation like for two years, the screenplay. And I’m still … I’m almost done with it. I’m hoping this draft that I’m working on now will be my last. The studio seems to really love it, and we’re working on conception design of the aliens and everything else, and it happens to be a studio that’s being bought by Disney right now. I’m working with Fox on it, so it feels a little bit like you’re one of those monks doing those giant murals in sand. It might just blow away, which would be a real shame, but everybody at Fox has been so good to me about it. And they’re so positive about it, obviously I’m trying to stay in the positive zone, and hopefully knock out this last draft.

“It’s epic. I mean, it’s the biggest canvas I’ve ever painted on, but it 100 percent feels like a Jeff Nichols film, which I’m sure there are gonna be some Alien Nation fans out there that are like, “What the fuck?” But my hope is if they … If people come to it just ready for a new story, that they’ll like it. And I put my heart and soul into it. To be the project that’s supposed to be me being a sell out, it is like the least … I’m not saying that to save face or be cool. I put so much of myself into it, it takes place in Arkansas. There’s so much of me in it.

“When you’re making something that big, there’s just so many things that are out of your control. In a weird way, all you can control and concentrate on is the creative aspect. The winds will blow you where they blow you, but as long as you’re telling to where you want to tell, and whenever that stops, then you gotta raise your hand and go, “Guys, this isn’t gonna work for me anymore.”

“But so far, that’s not been the case. So hopefully Alien Nation goes, I’ve got a couple of things that I won’t say are more serious films, because Alien Nation is actually pretty serious, but there’s a lot more traditional kind of adult movies. I’ve got a couple of those but I haven’t settled on one, and then I’ve got a really another big PG, PG-13 kind of like summer blockbuster family film, which makes it sound real lame, but it’s not. It’s more like Mud, but with some bigger fantastical elements in it.”

I love that he’s so passionate about the project and I hope that it all works out for him and that he gets to make his Alien Nation movie. I’m not really a fan of remakes, but I’ve love the films that Nichols has made and I believe that he could give us something really special with this project.

Nichols is a talented storyteller and he’s really good at developing his characters and getting the audience invested in them. I’m looking forward to seeing how his Alien Nation movie turns out.

What are your thoughts on what Nichols had to say here about his movie?