Latest news with #NoahHawley
Digital Trends
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Alien: Earth: Release date, plot, cast, and everything we know so far
After decades spent in space and as a film franchise, Alien: Earth is bringing the Alien franchise both to Earth and to the small screen. The show, which has been in development for years, will finally hit television in 2025. Created by Noah Hawley, the show brings the xenomorph threat to Earth, which is not totally unprecedented in the history of this franchise, but pretty close. Given that a lot is riding on this show, it's natural for people to have questions about it. Here's everything we know: What is Alien: Earth about? The official synopsis for the show explains: 'When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat.' Recommended Videos The story is reportedly set in the year 2120, just two years before the events of the original Alien and 16 years after the events of Alien: Covenant. At this point in Earth's history, the world is ruled by five massive corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. We know from the trailers that the main character is a synthetic, a fully human person whose mind was transferred into a new, enhanced body. We also know that the ship that crash-landed on Earth collected five dangerous alien creatures, which suggests that the xenomorph won't be the only thing on the hunt in this series. On a more thematic level, the show appears to be a meditation on the lines between artificial intelligence and humanity. This definitely isn't a new theme for this franchise, but given that the series is set on Earth, it's possible we'll interact with even more non-human characters than we have in the past. When is the release date for Alien: Earth? Alien: Earth is set to hit Hulu and FX at 8 p.m. ET on August 12. The show will debut with two episodes, with one episode debuting each week from then until the end of the eight-episode season. Episode Dates: Episode 1 – Neverland: August 12 Episode 2 – Mr. October: August 12 Episode 3 – Metamorphosis: August 19 Episode 4 – Observation: August 26 Episode 5 – TBD: September 2 Episode 6 – TBD: September 9 Episode 7 – TBD: September 16 Episode 8 – TBD: September 23 Are there any trailers for Alien: Earth? There have been tons of trailers for Alien: Earth, including a full trailer that was released on June 5. That trailer gives a pretty full understanding of the premise but doesn't offer a ton of spoilers beyond that. Overall, the trailers have given us the sense that this show is well-resourced and has the budget to be a long-term success. Who is in the cast of Alien: Earth? The cast of Alien: Earth includes: Sydney Chandler as Wendy as Wendy Alex Lawther as Hermit as Hermit Essie Davis as Dame Sylvia as Dame Sylvia Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh as Kirsh Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier as Boy Kavalier Kit Young as Tootles as Tootles Adarsh Gourav as Slightly as Slightly Erana James as Curly as Curly David Rysdahl as Arthur Sylvia as Arthur Sylvia Babou Ceesay as Morrow as Morrow Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins as Atom Eins Lily Newmark as Nibs as Nibs Jonathan Ajayi as Smee as Smee Diêm Camille as Siberian as Siberian Moe Bar-El as Rashidi as Rashidi Sandra Yi Sencindiver as Yutani Where can I stream Alien: Earth? FX's Alien: Earth. OFFICIAL TRAILER. We were safer in space. Premieres August 12 on @fxnetworks | Hulu and with #HuluOnDisneyPlus. — Hulu (@hulu) June 5, 2025 In addition to being released on Hulu, Alien: Earth will also be available to stream on Disney+ and to watch on FX if you have a cable subscription.
Irish Independent
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Alien: Earth TV series captures aesthetic of original film, says producer
The sci-fi drama, from Emmy-winning producer Noah Hawley, is based on the acclaimed franchise, which began with Ridley's 1979 film starring Sigourney Weaver as warrant officer Ellen Ripley who takes on an extra-terrestrial lifeform called the Xenomorph. The new eight-episode series sees Wendy, played by US actress Sydney Chandler, and a group of tactical soldiers make a discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat.
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
‘Alien' lands at Comic-Con
The highly anticipated science fiction series 'Alien: Earth' officially landed at Comic-Con in California on Friday, where thousands of fans watched the pilot of a new TV series in the franchise. The pop culture convention held annually in San Diego was the chosen setting for the world premiere of the FX series created by Noah Hawley. 'This is by far the biggest thing I've ever made,' Hawley told 6,500 cheering fans in Comic-Con's Hall H before presenting the first episode, which he also directed. And in Hall H -- unlike in space -- you could hear them scream. 'It was crazy!' squealed Nicole Martindale, a fan of the franchise who traveled from northern California for the event. 'It wasn't what I expected based on the Alien movies, but it was pretty cool,' she added. 'Alien: Earth' is set a couple of years before the events of Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 film starring Sigourney Weaver. Scott served as executive producer of this expansion of the franchise, which will hit streaming platforms in August. 'If I have a skill at adapting these films, it's in an understanding what the original movie made me feel and why, and trying to create it anew by telling you a totally different story,' Hawley told the audience. The panel also featured stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Babou Ceesay and Samuel Blenkin, who discussed what it was like to become part of the storied franchise and share a scene with the Xenomorph. 'It's a dream, it was surreal,' said Chandler, who plays Wendy, a 'hybrid' who is a blend of human consciousness and a synthetic body. 'I've been a sci-fi and 'Alien' fan forever. I keep pinching myself.' US actress Elle Fanning attends the Predator: Badlands panel in Hall H of the convention center. US actors Jared Leto (left) and Jeff Bridges speak onstage at the Tron: Ares panel in Hall H of the convention center. Predator stands onstage at the Predator: Badlands panel in Hall H of the convention center. 'Tron' One of the world's largest celebrations of pop culture, Comic-Con brings together 130,000 people, many of whom come dressed as wizards, princesses or characters from movies, games or TV series. This year, the lines to enter Hall H have been less frenetic than in previous editions. Fans accustomed to camping out at the gates of the venue to get a spot inside say the lack of a big Marvel Studios presence has eased the crush. 'Last year, we arrived the night before and had to wait hours to get' in, said Carla Gonzalez, who has attended the event every year with her family since 2013. 'This year the first panel is about to start, and there are still empty chairs. If Marvel were here, it would be packed,' she added. There was still plenty for afficionados to get excited about, including a panel on 'Predator: Badlands' directed by Dan Trachtenberg and set to hit US theaters in November. 'There is something really special about strapping into something... and having no idea what will happen next, and that's 'Badlands',' Trachtenberg said. Trachtenberg, responsible for revitalizing the franchise with 'Prey' (2022), appeared alongside stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who plays the Predator, Dek. The production places the predator at the center of the plot for the first time as prey, not hunter. 'He is ferocious and bad ass, and very much an anti-hero,' Trachtenberg said. Actors Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges and Greta Lee and the team from 'Tron: Ares' also delighted fans. The film, directed by Joachim Ronning, is the third installment of another beloved science fiction franchise which began in 1982, with Bridges playing a hacker who becomes trapped in the digital world. Comic-Con concludes on Sunday. — AFP
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The future of Alien, without Sigourney Weaver
In space, no one can hear you scream. But what about down here? Well, we're about to find out. Having spent seven movies in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, the Alien franchise, begun by Ridley Scott in 1979, is about to be, quite literally, brought down to Earth. In Noah Hawley's upcoming Disney+ TV series, Alien: Earth, a research vessel owned by the megacorp Weyland-Yutani, familiar from the films, crash-lands into the Bangkok of 2120 (two years before the events onboard the spaceship Nostromo in the first Alien film). The crash brings HR Giger's unmistakable Xenomorph, plus a whole host of other nasty intergalactic beasties, to our planet. The snappy new tagline tells you all you need to know: 'We were safer in space.' Hawley – the writer-director known for his innovative take on Marvel superheroes in Legion and his daring extension of Coen Brothers' lore in the Fargo anthology series – has given the sci-fi horror franchise another twist. Alongside the familiar 'synths' – the unsettling androids made famous in the franchise by Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen and (in the Prometheus films) Michael Fassbender – and cybernetically enhanced 'cyborgs' (humans with hi-tech additions), Hawley has introduced an even more troubling creation: the 'hybrid'. These are synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness, created by a shadowy corporation named Prodigy. In this case, the consciousness of a group of terminally ill children, who become known as 'the Lost Boys'. Forget Alien, this is Frankenstein for the 21st century. 'The first idea when I started thinking about Alien was the fact it's not just a monster movie,' says Hawley. 'The Ian Holm reveal – that he was a synthetic. He was artificial intelligence, and that artificial intelligence was trying to kill them.' When Hawley began writing the show, 'ChatGPT didn't exist', but the series' central question about our reliance on and suspicion of AI has become eerily prescient. 'It's like Noah saw into the future,' says Sydney Chandler, who plays Wendy, the leader of the Lost Boys and the central figure of Alien: Earth. It is the past, however, that has inspired Hawley. The look and feel, particularly in the opening scene, is pure 1970s. Andy Nicholson, the production designer, pored slavishly over the original two films (1979's Alien and James Cameron's 1986 follow-up Aliens). He used the Nostromo as a blueprint for the vessels and taking inspiration from 1970s Italian furniture and car interiors. 'We decided it should be the future as imagined in 1979,' says Nicholson, 'and not to go in the direction of Prometheus'. Scott, an executive producer on the project, was happy to let them get on with it. 'Every time I spoke to him, he was storyboarding,' says Hawley. 'First House of Gucci, then The Last Duel, and then Napoleon. He made at least three movies while I was making one season of television.' Both Hawley and Nicholson are careful not to criticise Scott's Prometheus movies, but it's clear they want a clean break from them. 'The 1970s movie-ness of Ridley's film and the very 1980s movie-ness of Cameron's film, those were a big part of it for me,' says Hawley. 'Prometheus is a prequel, but one in which the technology feels thousands of years more futuristic. So I had a choice. And there was just no way to make Alien without the retrofuturism of technology.' Indeed, much of the look has stuck so closely to the first two films' concepts that many of the original designers have been given production credits on Alien: Earth. This is seen most starkly in the very first few minutes of the show, which begins just as Alien did, with a group of workers on board a vessel bound for Earth, the Weyland-Yutani owned Maginot, waking up from cryostasis. The aesthetic – from the furnishings and computer graphics to the sweaters and the moustaches – is pure 1979. 'I really wanted to send a message that the movie I was most inspired by was Ridley's,' explains Hawley. Even Jeff Russo's soaring score apes that of Jerry Goldsmith's memorable intro music – with a twist. 'You want to pay homage to what came before and yet also forge a new identity – that's the trick, right?' says Russo. As we approach the Maginot, Russo's orchestral title track is assailed by distortion and, most disturbingly, human voices. It's Alien, Jim, but not as we know it. Soon the Maginot, and its mason jars of alien lifeforms, are lying in pieces in Prodigy City, 'New Siam', on a sweltering Earth. Those lifeforms were the major challenge. Hawley decided they could not simply rely upon Giger's world-famous, biomechanical Xenomorph. Nicholson felt the pressure: 'The Xenomorph was the scariest space creature you'd ever seen. And these creatures had to be worse.' Before the Maginot goes down in flames, we see the jars and glass boxes filled with all sorts of primordial, unearthly beings. 'The first movie is rooted so much in body horror and a genetic revulsion about parasites,' says Hawley, 'and this really uncomfortable, pseudosexual, penetrative design aesthetic. So I just went with: what is the worst thing? What makes me the most uncomfortable or repulsed or disgusted?' The answer, seemingly, lies in a creature known as T Ocellus, a grotesque, tentacled octopus/jellyfish thing that seems to be made out of eyes. 'That was the one,' says Nicholson, wincing. 'I saw the design and thought, 'Oh God, who came up with that?'' The jury is out on whether it is the creatures that will scare the living daylights out of viewers or whether it will be Boy Kavalier, a 20-year-old tech trillionaire played by Samuel Blenkin who runs Prodigy and has created the synthetic-human hybrids. In the world of Alien: Earth, humanity is controlled by five megacorporations who, in the style of the East India Company, have largely usurped democratic governments. The companies are in an arms race for control of the Earth, the known galaxy and the future of human life itself. Thus when Weyland-Yutani's ship crashes into Prodigy City, Kavalier smells an opportunity. An unscrupulous tech CEO with a god complex? Which real-life equivalent could Hawley have been thinking of? All of them, he says: 'It's narcissism that defines so many of these figures. The 'Great Man' has come back. And yet in many ways none of them want to grow up. If there's a metaphor between our show and our present moment, it's when you look around at all the really deep, complicated, intrinsic problems that we're having on this planet. What they really require to solve them is adults.' Not wanting to grow up is key to the Peter Pan-obsessed Kavalier, who has named his research facility Neverland and reads the book to the children each night. When they transition to their synthetic bodies, Kavalier rechristens them all from JM Barrie's story – alongside Wendy, there's Slightly, Tootles, Curly, Nibs and Smee. Kavalier, of course, is The Boy Who Never Grew Up. 'He likes that analogy,' says Hawley. 'Peter Pan is a dark book. There's a moment where Peter is angry and frustrated, so he breathes in and out as quickly as he can, because he believes that every breath he takes kills a grown-up. And it is implied that as the Lost Boys mature, he 'thins them out', to keep that out of his world. And those elements felt like they fit, thematically.' Chandler's Wendy is the first of the Lost Boys to transition and acts as a big sister to the others as they get used to their new – adult, superhuman, immortal – bodies. Chandler, the 29-year-old daughter of actor Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Bloodline), is a relative unknown, yet was determined to land the role. She flew out to Canada, where Fargo was being filmed, the morning after reading the script, and convinced Hawley to let her take him for dinner. Her determination (she calls it 'impulsivity') and passion for the role impressed him. It's a great piece of casting – Chandler imbues Wendy with an otherworldly gawkiness, a disarming innocence and an unnerving unknowability. The actress, understandably, wishes to avoid comparison between Wendy and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley. 'You can't recreate Alien. You can't recreate Ripley. If the scripts had gone in that direction, I wouldn't have wanted to do it. My goal was to bring as much strength and honesty and integrity and backbone to the character [as I could], because that's what I looked up to when I saw Alien for the first time.' For all the ingenious concepts within Alien, what underpins the franchise is human greed and the extent to which corporations are happy to play God. Like all classic sci-fi, the humans in the TV series unleash forces they can no longer control. Does Hawley feel that, via AI, we are at such a point now? 'I don't think AI is going to take my job,' he says. 'But I'm at a rarified level of storytelling, with an idiosyncratic approach. [However] I think if you are a writer on Law & Order, you should be worried.' But Hawley has bigger concerns, and they can be seen in the blood, guts and synth fluid of Alien: Earth. 'Europe does a much better job of regulating technology and thinking about the human implications of it. In the US, it's still about the dollar. And I worry there are no brakes on this train, because the people who would be the brakes are not incentivised to slow it down. I worry it's going to get away from us very quickly. If it hasn't already.' Alien: Earth comes to Disney+ on August 13 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Alien: Earth' Screens Blockbuster First Episode at Comic-Con
The upcoming Alien television series crash landed into Comic-Con with a blockbuster Hall H panel that got thousands of geeks sitting on the edge of their seats to an encroaching otherworldly horror. Alien: Earth, the FX series based on the classic 20th Century Studios science fiction horror movies, saw its first episode play on a giant screen in front of over 6,500 fans ahead of the show's premiere on FX and Hulu on Aug. 12. It was an ear-splitting, body-shaking experience that showcased epic moments, intimate moments and icky moments. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Rick and Morty' Spinoff 'President Curtis' a Go at Adult Swim 'The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon' Renewed for Fourth and Final Season at AMC "James Fraser Dies" in First 'Outlander' Season 8 Footage 'This is by far the biggest thing I've ever made,' said Noah Hawley, the showrunner who wrote and directed the pilot episode. 'But I made it like I make everything else: By hand, and love for you.' The series is ostensibly about a crashed spacecraft that brings the dreaded Alien xenomorph to Earth. But as expected, in Hawley's hands, there is much more going on. There are themese of humanity's quest for immortality, the greed of corporations (and inter-corporate warfare) and sibling love. Sydney Chandler plays a young woman named Wendy who is a first of her kind hybrid, a humanoid robot infused with human consciousness made by one of the mega-corporations who run the world. When a research starship owned by another mega-corporation crashes in a Southeast Asian metropolis, the childlike Wendy leads a rescue mission in order to find her brother. Unbeknownst to all, a xenomorph is on the ship… and so are a bunch of brand new alien creatures. 'Each hour has to have its horror elements but it has to be a drama,' explained Hawley. 'It has to be a character journey and be themactically rich. You have to worry that I may kill one of these people. I just might.' Timothy Olyphant, who plays a father figure of sorts to Chandler's characters, concurred, adding that by the time audiences gets four episodes in, it will be the character moments they will remember. But let's get back to the new creatures. Hawley said that the idea behind that was creating new feelings of 'genetic revulsion.' 'The one feeling you can't get back is the discovery of the life cycle of this creature (we all know so well now),' he said. 'How every step along the way is worse than the step before.' That said, there is plenty of xenomorph action. And it was mostly practical effects. The xenomorph was a man in a suit, not CG. 'I almost peed,' Chandler said when she saw him on set for the first time. Alien: Earth has a strong presence at Comic-Con as it also has an elaborate activation on the grounds of the convention center and nearby hotel. The interactive site allows guests to visit the crash site of the space ship holding the alien specimens and even allows for 'missions' in the evening as well as giveaways. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
