Quality Over Quantity: Noah Hawley's Approach to His ALIEN Series
Alien creator and showrunner Noah Hawley has confirmed that his upcoming series will run for multiple seasons and shares some insight on crafting the series and telling a story that leads to a planned ending.
There’s a lot of curiosity and excitement surrounding this Alien series and I’ve been excited about seeing how this story is going to play out. That story “takes place before Ripley. It’s the first story that takes place in the Alien franchise on Earth.” It’s also been revealed that it will be set near “the end of this century we’re in — so 70-odd years from now.” It will also be the first Alien story set on Earth.
During a recent interview with Collider, Hawley opened up about creating the series and building out the story. He said that he was informed by FX fairly early on that they wanted multiple seasons, meaning he's been able to plan out a full story with a definitive ending the show will build toward.
Hawley talked about endings, saying: "I think that endings are what gives a story meaning, and so you should never start a story without some sense of where it's going because then you can really build that meaning into it.”
He went on to say: "With Legion, I had what felt like a three-act structure to it that I didn't know if that would be three seasons or five seasons, or whatever it was, but I sort of knew what a beginning, middle, and end was. And here, similarly, I knew that their desire was for a recurring series, not a limited series, and I had an idea that I was excited about, that I could see the escalation of it from one year to another."
The filmmaker also talked about pitching the series, saying: "That's where we ended up not pitching them having a bible or pitching them blow-by-blow, but saying, 'Big picture: this is the first movement, this is the second movement, and we're ultimately going here.'"
He then explained that he’s taking a "quality, not quantity" approach to handling his Alien story, saying: "Obviously, they trust me after all these years, and the writing was on the page for the first year. So, in success, you tell the story and tell the story until the story is done. They're very good at that at FX, of not wanting you to milk something that feels like it's over."
I like that this is the kind of series that won’t wear out it’s welcome. When the story ends, it ends.
The project will also blend “both the timeless horror of the first Alien film with the non-stop action of the second, it’s going to be a scary thrill ride that will blow people back in their seats.“
Hawley previously talked about the project, saying: “It's about how we're trapped between the primordial past and the artificial intelligence of our future, where both [are] trying to kill us. 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."
He went on to share: “It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a spaceship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”
The show also stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther (The End of the F*cking World) as the male lead, a soldier named CJ, with Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror) as another main character named Boy Kavalier, a CEO. Additional cast members include Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) as Dame Silvia, Timothy Olyphant, and Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger) as Slightly.
The series is currently in production.