A couple of years ago we learned that Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo) was looking to make an Alien TV series that he pitched to Fox. His concept for the series was ultimately rejected.
It was explained that Fox CEO Stacey Snider “fended off an attempt by Hawley and FX to take the Aliens franchise and turn it into a miniseries.” Apparently, she didn’t want to give up the franchise to a TV series.
In a recent interview with Observer, Hawley discussed his idea for this rejected Alien TV series, and explained:
“Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Star Trek. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst. There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.’ If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it.
“I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the Aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s Aliens!’”
I would have actually liked to see Hawley get to make his Alien series. The Alien universe is huge, there are so many different kinds of stories to tell involving a variety of interesting characters. It’s a shame that Fox lacked the vision of what a series like this could be. There’s a lot of potential here!
There have been rumors of Alien shows being developed in the past, but nothing has come of those rumors. There is a new Alien film project currently in development, but I’d also be interested in watching a cool Alien series that tells a great story!
Source: Observer