Noah Hawley has plans for his FX Alien series to run for multiple seasons.
Speaking with Collider, Hawley revealed that his upcoming Alien series with Tomthy Olyphant and Essie Davis will likely be a “recurring series” with a definitive ending.
“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 said.
Hawley continued, “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. 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.’”
What else do we know about the Alien series?
Having been delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes, FX’s Alien series is now looking to premiere in the first half of 2025, according to Hawley.
Along with Olyphant and Davis, the series also stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Adarsh Gourav, Kit Young, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille, Adrian Edmondson, and Moe Bar-El.
When asked if he’d be directing any of the episodes of Alien, Hawley said, “I think that’s a hard one just because we had the strike, so we’re figuring that out. But it’s thrilling to get behind the camera again, and to get behind the camera on this and to do something that’s much bigger and in the science fiction genre, playing with the elements that we all know from Alien. It’s really thrilling.”
Plot details remain under wraps at this time; however, Hawley recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the series will not deal with story elements featured in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
