James Cameron Was Told That ALIENS Was a "No-Win" for Him and a "Career Ender"
James Cameron’s Aliens was such a badass movie! It was the first R-rated movie my dad took me to when I was a kid, and I loved every freakin’ second of that movie! It turns out that some producers in Hollywood didn’t have faith in Cameron. In fact, one producer told him that the movie was a “no-win” for him and that the movie was a “career ender.”
In a recent interview with Empire, Cameron was asked if he had any hesitation when it came to making a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and while he wasn’t worried, some people were. Cameron said:
“I had lunch with a bigshot producer when I was about to start Aliens who said, ‘This is a no-win for you. If your movie’s good, Ridley will get the credit. If it’s bad, it’s all you. It’s a career ender.’ I said, ‘Yeah, buuuuuut… I like it.’ I was maybe a dumbass fanboy, but I could see it so clearly in my head that I just had to go make it.”
The director then went on to talk about how he pitched the title for the sequel while in a meeting with the studio head and various executive producers. This is a story that he’s already told, but it’s a fun one to be reminded of!
“I was in a meeting with the studio head and the executive producers, and I turned my script over and on the blank side of the last page I wrote Alien. Then I drew an S on the end. Then I drew two vertical lines through the S and held it up to show them. Maybe it was just Pavlovian conditioning when they saw the $ sign connected closely to the word Alien. Or maybe it was the confidence I projected. But they said yes.”
He previously added this bit of information about how this story continued to play out:
I showed it to them. I said, ‘I want to call it Aliens because we’re not dealing with one. Now we’re dealing with an army, and that’s the big distinction. And it’s very simple and very graphic.’ I said, ‘But here’s what it’s going to translate to.’ And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. That was my pitch. And apparently, it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it.”
So, while there was one producer who didn’t think Cameron would benefit from making this movie, there were people at the studio that put their full trust in him, and he managed to pull off something incredibly special and awesome!