Alien: Earth creator explains how and why the series differs from the films
"It's fundamentally meant to be an ongoing story, and so you have to build it in a different way."
New Disney+ series Alien: Earth is the first series in the Alien franchise, which has been around for 46 years and which has already featured seven movies.
The series comes from Noah Hawley, who has experience expanding a film out to be a series, having created the series Fargo, based on the Coen brothers' 1996 movie.
Hawley spoke with us for The Radio Times Writers' Room, our interview series in which we get to know what makes writers tick, and revealed how he approached Alien: Earth - and why it had to be different from the films.
Asked if it was a challenge to build the story out from a film franchise to a series, he said: "I mean, you just have to know what the two things are, right?
"I mean, fundamentally, an alien movie is a survival story, a two-hour survival story in which one or two people are going to live. And a television series can't be that."
Hawley continued: "It is a multiple-hour, sometimes 50-hour, recurring story about a multitude of characters who don't die, right? And so it's built in a very different way.
"And yeah, you have the horror elements and the dread, and there is violence, and people do die, but it's fundamentally meant to be an ongoing story, and so you have to build it in a different way."
Hawley's explained that he approached the series by initially taking the Xenomorph out of the equation and working out a story which could stand alone without it, before putting it back in.
That story centres on Wendy (Sydney Chandler), the first ever hybrid - a terminally ill child whose mind is uploaded to a synthetic, adult body, as part of an experiment devised by young genius Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin).
The series also stars Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, David Rysdahl and Babou Ceesay, among others, and introduces a number of new alien creatures to the lore of the franchise.
In his interview for The Radio Times Writers' Room, Hawley also spoke about his work on previous projects, including Fargo and the Dan Stevens-starring Marvel show Legion.
Noah Hawley's interview for The Radio Times Writers' Room is available to watch in full here.
Alien: Earth will premiere on Disney+ on Wednesday 13th August, with the first two episodes available to stream. A new episode will premiere each following Wednesday. You can sign up to Disney+ for £4.99 a month or £89.90 a year now.
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Authors
James Hibbs is a Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering programmes across both streaming platforms and linear channels. He previously worked in PR, first for a B2B agency and subsequently for international TV production company Fremantle. He possesses a BA in English and Theatre Studies and an NCTJ Level 5 Diploma in Journalism.
