This show will be set on Earth, 70 years before the events of the first Alien movie. https://deadline.com/2022/08/fx-gives-updates-on-alien-series-shogun-fargo-season-5-tca-1235083740/
I mean, there can be some action at the Company labs as the Alien(s) specimens they recover get out, but it's obviously going to be contained and kept secret from the public since no one in Ripley's time goes "Hey, remember that time the Company caused an alien outbreak on Earth with creatures that looked just like these ones?" That kind of takes some of the suspense away. Obviously there will still be the Company being evil and no doubt some rogue or sinister androids too. The Alien movies of late have been shit (and that's not even counting the AvP movies), so hopefully a TV show can do better.
Is this the Noah Hawley thing? I’m interested on that basis alone. A brilliant creative person. Edit - Yes. Written by Hawley too. I think it should be very interesting. Possibly more interesting than anything that’s happened to this franchise since 1986.
I am so tired of every franchise doing prequels. Just set something after Alien Resurrection or Covenant or which ever one came last in the timeline, Ridley Scott is 84 years old and only seems to care about the stupid Prometheus stuff anyway when he bothers with it, it would be very easy to just set up a new Alien story. Create a location (planet, space ship, space station, etc), find a reason to have a xenomorph infestation, and fill in the blanks. It obviously needs talented people working on it to be good, but the set up doesn't need to be complicated.
Earth will have a Xenomorph infestation that most of the public will be unaware of, but it will all be swept under the rug by the time the Nostromo is launched. I guess that's the series in a nutshell...
I would love either an Aliens series that adapts the comics or does something new with the material. Those were set somewhat on Earth but after Aliens and were originally featuring Newt and Hicks but got changed after Alien 3 came out to new characters and it worked better. OR I want an actual Alien Vs Predator series based off the comics or at least set in the Alien to Aliens timeframe and NOT on Earth. Show me another planet or space station or something away from here.
I'm not even sure what it is you are objecting to, much less massively objecting to, since you don't seem to be disagreeing with me that much? It's obvious by my wording that I was saying the AvP movies are terrible, so much so that I didn't even consider them in the same league with the dedicated Alien and Alien/Prometheus films. Prometheus is beautifully shot, has superb production design, is well-acted and wonderfully cast, and has an absolute hot mess of a story that takes you out of the film where no one behaves in a manner remotely approaching rationality, good judgment, scientific or tactical expertise, or intelligence, despite being ostensibly chosen for precisely those qualities. But I can appreciate that he was trying to do something original. Covenant was even worse and completely neglected to pay-off any of the questions or cliffhangers or dangling story bits left over from the previous film in any kind of meaningful way, and ironically utterly failed at being an enjoyable or compelling film about the Aliens either, despite the pandering to audience and critical desires about wanting more of the Aliens after Prometheus. Killing Newman Grapeface's character offscreen (I don't know why they killed her off, but if it was because she didn't want to come back they should have just recast the character) as well as the entire Engineer species was a bullshit copout and removed the most interesting story elements. I don't think the latter elevates Prometheus in any way though, because it did nothing to answer any of its lingering points or to recast Prometheus in a different context, and Prometheus' issues were never about not looking spectacular or being capably directed or shot; they were all about the massive clusterfuck of a script. But I'm not really interested on getting into a long drawn out argument about the merits or lack thereof of of Prometheus' writing, because been there done that ad nauseam when the movie came out.
Controversial Opinion: I like all of the Alien movies, inclusive of Covenant and Prometheus. The AvP stuff was horrific, and I don't even really count that. But, I just sort of go with the flow on most of the other Alien flicks. They range from brilliant to entertaining-but-stupid...and there's a time and a place for all of that.
I suppose the story could be about a remnant group of Engineers or their automated systems dispatching another horseshoe ship filled with the Alien bioweapons ampoules to target Earth, and it crash lands and is fought by the Weyland-Yutani Company (with conflicting motives to capture it alive) and proto-Colonial Marines or mercs on Earth. Obviously it would have to either be in a remote area the public doesn't find out about, or somewhere populated but under forced (electronically) communications blackout that gets nuked to contain / cover up the outbreak and blamed on an accident or false flag attack.
I think you're missing the part that most people miss - these were NOT the best of the best people. These were specialists who were also dumb enough to be fooled into going on this mission. Potentially bottom of the barrel "experts".
Except that explanation makes no sense once you find out the reveal that Weyland himself is on the ship, so stocking your crew with the bottom of the barrel scientists and security personnel who are going to fuck things up royally before you even go to meet the Engineers yourself, or who suck so bad at their security jobs that they can't provide adequate protection for you, is a bad idea. What if Feifeld or the other guy set off a self-destruct mechanism while they were fiddling around the Engineer's ship? Or if they had released a biohazard that killed everyone on Prometheus before Weyland got to speak to the Engineers? Don't you want competent scientists to learn as much as they can about this unknown progenitor species and their biotech/ship before you go to meet them? Maybe then you could have known that they were pissed at humans and wanted to exterminate them all, so maybe meeting them in person at first wasn't the best idea? Having competent people on your crew in no way prevents Weyland himself from going to visit the Engineers eventually. He was financing the whole thing and had the only ship (or so they thought), so he could have just insisted on it. There was no reason, beyond silly "shocking reveal!" plot points, that he even had to play dead or keep the fact that he was aboard the ship or that Vickers was his daughter a secret. Dammit, now you dragged me into discussing Prometheus' plot issues again, which was precisely what I wanted to avoid. Been there, done that, got the souvenir t-shirt.
Oh well--the Alien franchise continues to be flushed down the toilet. It only has one genuine classic--the original--with the rest landing in the underwhelming to mediocre to abysmal classification, and yes, Aliens falls somewhere in said classification.
Alien is one of the best sci-fi horror movies. Aliens is one of the best sci-fi action movies. No other Alien projects are even close to the best of anything. This one will probably be very different though. This is the Fargo/Legion guy. No way he is just making a simple rehash. This show will be weird.
I liked the first AvP. We got an Alien Queen on Earth now…last seen dragged to Antarctic depths. That is an excellent setting…could shoggoths or MacReady be far away? If no cross-over, maybe the Queen adapted to aquatic life on the down low. Orcas already look a bit like the Xenomorph organism….as do all those deep sea anglerfish and gulper eels. Now we know why…
I’d like to see the wooden spaceship that was planned for Alien 3 originally. I’d like to see a show about that.
It was going to be a wooden planet with 19 feet of atmosphere and some monks. Then they decided there is just no way they could make that make any sense whatsoever.
The original script for Alien 3 got turned into a comic book from Dark Horse. It was actually pretty decent but you can tell they weren't sure if they'd have Ripley in it because she's sidelined through the whole thing. This is before the wooden spaceship I think.