Last December, it was made official by Disney that Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo) would be making an Earthbound series set within the Alien franchise for FX On Hulu with Ridley Scott taking a producing role (Scott being the gatekeeper of the Alien franchise via Scott Free).
While speaking with The Independent, Ridley Scott gives the impression he might be more hands-off than we previously expected and proceeded to theorize the show will “never” be as good as his original 1979 film, which comes off as more of a dig towards Hawley than trying to motivate the successful creator of FX’s Legion and Fargo to outshine Alien.
“Wherever [the series goes], whatever they do, ‘It’ll never be as good as the first one,’ [Scott grins] ‘That’s what I’ll say.’”
These somewhat passive-aggressive comments aren’t terribly shocking given that Ridley Scott seems to big his own biggest cheerleader and believing he alone knows what is best for the Alien franchise. Then again, Alien: Covenant ended up one of the biggest misfires in the franchise and due to it’s weak audience response, the cliffhanger ending never paid off similar to Prometheus.
When Neill Blomkamp got candid about Alien 5 over the summer, the director cited Ridley Scott as the reason his movie never went into production and how he basically intervened with the studio to have him thrown off Alien 5, potentially because of Chappie.
“At the end of the day even though Ridley Scott is producing it, he brought that to the world, so if he changes his mind or if there is a director on it he doesn’t want, whatever it may be, it’s his. I understand that, it makes logical sense to me.”
“It’s possible that Ridley watched Chappie and he was like, this guy can’t do Alien so let’s just go ahead and move on.”
Scott already taking minor shots on the series in the press isn’t all that surprising, hopefully, he won’t throw his weight around for a second time to get another Alien project killed/blocked.
The director has The Last Duel and House of Gucci hitting theaters alongside period dramas Kitbag and a sequel to Gladiator on the horizon to go behind cameras in the near future. While he’s teased talks with 20th Century Studios about a third Alien prequel, that hasn’t been made official or greenlit.
FX boss John Landgraf previously indicated back in August that the show could be ready for 2023 (possible 2022 shoot) and will feel like it is part of the cinematic universe.
“I think you’ll also see that the show will feel like a part of the cinematic universe you’re familiar with in terms of Alien. I have optimism that that show may well roll out in 2023. It will probably roll out 2023, but we want to get it right.”
Noah Hawley is also busy lining up an untitled heist thriller at Netflix starring Rege-Jean Page and will be produced by The Russo Brothers.
Granted, Alien is an amazing movie, but it comes off as reductive and childish for Scott to dismiss the potential of the series before it’s even started filming.
While director Neill Blomkamp was able to convince both actress Sigourney Weaver and Aliens director James Cameron (called the film’s outline/idea “gangbusters”) about his pitch for Alien 5, but it sounds like Ridley Scott was ultimately the harder sell and may have ultimately led to the project’s death.
During a recent interview with The Playlist, Blomkamp suggested that Ridley Scott was possibly behind his exit from the sci-fi sequel.
“At the end of the day even though Ridley Scott is producing it, he brought that to the world, so if he changes his mind or if there is a director on it he doesn’t want, whatever it may be, it’s his. I understand that, it makes logical sense to me.”
Blomkamp further alluded to The Guardian that Alien 5 producer Ridley Scott (current gatekeeper of the Alien franchise) potentially watched Chappie and that may have behind Scott changing his mind about letting Blomkamp direct Alien 5 (a project Ridley Scott tried to make 20 years ago).
“It’s possible that Ridley watched Chappie and he was like, this guy can’t do Alien so let’s just go ahead and move on.”
When asked if he’d return to the franchise anytime in the future he declined that as a possibility and quickly debunked online rumblings that Alien 5 was back on track with his involvement.
“Not after, no no no, there’s no coming back from that. I’m not gonna work on a film for two years and have the rug pulled out from underneath me and then go hang out and have beers. It’s exactly why I don’t want to do IP based on other people’s stuff ever again.”
“I’m sure they will make many films with that piece of IP, it just doesn’t include me.”
It’s worth noting that as soon as Alien 5 got nixed by Scott/20th Century Fox, they quickly moved forward with Scott’s Alien: Covenant. There is a good chance that Scott saw Alien 5 as a competing film to Covenant and decided to curb-stomp it (considering his high status at the studio). There were some similarities between the two films with multiple androids as revealed in concept artwork (one good and one bad), and we wouldn’t be terribly shocked if Covenant lifted other elements from Alien 5.
Chappie was both a critical and box office disaster for Blomkamp. The sci-fi movie had multiple oddball choices including giving large roles to non-actors Die Antwoord (rapper pals of Blomkamp), who played awful characters that were on par with Hugh Jackman’s villain but were supposed to be “likable.” It certainly had less to say than the social commentary infused into the story as Blomkamp’s prior two movies District 9 and Elysium, feeling like more of “this would be cool if we did this” exercise.
With District 10 in development and other Elysium films on table, I don’t think we can say that the director has any interest in Chappie follow-ups anytime soon.
CHAPPIE – In the near future, a mechanized police force patrols the streets and deals with lawbreakers — but now, the people are fighting back. When one police droid is stolen and given new programming, he acquires the ability to feel and think for himself. While the robot, dubbed “Chappie (Sharlto Copley),” puzzles out human behavior, the authorities begin to see him as a danger to mankind and order; they will stop at nothing to ensure that Chappie is the last of his kind.
Friday marked the 25th anniversary of German director Roland Emmerich‘s alien invasion film “Independence Day,” but it wasn’t the only big sci-fi spectacle he had been working on for 20th Century Fox.
In the wake of David Fincher‘s “Alien 3,” it felt like 20th Century Fox was over the “Alien” franchise, and Sigourney Weaver leading it. Ellen Ripley had killed herself at the end of the film making subsequent sequels seemingly moot after their lead character’s death and flopping at the box office. Thinking they were done with the Ripley saga, between “Alien 3” and “Alien Resurrection” the studio tried to develop an early incarnation of an “Alien vs. Predator” movie years before the Paul W.S. Anderson version.
A rumor appeared in 1992 (same year that “Universal Soldier” is released) that Emmerich was going to direct an “AVP” film based on the popular Dark Horse Comics run, this wasn’t hard to imagine because 1990’s “Predator 2” had given audiences a nod to the comic book crossover as they added a xenomorph skull on a wall of trophies in the predator ship at the end of the film. In 1994, “Stargate” is released and that success leads to another original humans vs. aliens project with the 1996 box office juggernaut “Independence Day,” Toho and TriStar Pictures feel confident enough to allow Roland Emmerich to direct a modern “Godzilla” reboot using CGI special effects.
In 1996, “Alien Resurrection” begins shooting in Los Angeles with French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet overseeing the sequel and Ellen Ripley is brought back via the wonders of cloning (originally going to be a clone of Newt), thanks “Jurassic Park.” The film ends with the survivors landing in Paris and leaves the door open for a fifth installment.
In the November 1997 issue of Starlog Magazine, screenwriter Dean Devlin (“Stargate,” “Independence Day,” “Godzilla“) was interviewed about his Fox Television series “The Visitor” and asked about the status with “Alien vs. Predator” he replied, “For the time being, it’s dead. We wanted to do it if they had not just decided to do ‘Alien Resurrection,’ and now we’re all just waiting around to see how that film does. If it really works, the studio is going to want to continue the franchise with just the alien. If that were to happen, then we won’t be involved at all.”
This interview taking place before “Alien Resurrection”s late November release and while the sequel made slightly more than “Alien 3,” it still didn’t meet studio expectations. The following year, Roland and Dean released their critical disaster “Godzilla,” which was ridiculed and likely could have been a reason why 20th Century Fox ultimately didn’t want them handling a crossover to their two lucrative sci-fi franchises.
Speaking of “Predator 2,” Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally going to return as Dutch in the sequel before the role was reworked as Peter Keyes for actor Gary Busey and there has been a longstanding rumor that Arnold was going to star in this “AVP” movie, there might be something behind that.
In 1991, before Emmerich’s “Universal Soldier” starring Jean-Claude Van Damme was released in 1992, Schwarzenegger visited the film’s set, and we have a bunch of photos that documented that visit. There is a possibility that Arnold was there to get a read on Roland Emmerich and speak to Jean-Claude Van Damme about his experience working with him.
JCVD’s star was rising in the 1990s and had played the first incarnation of the alien hunter in “Predator” before leaving during Stan Winston‘s redesign of the creature (with some help from James Cameron) to lead his action film “Bloodsport” instead of being hidden behind a predator costume.
Producers had been trying to lure him back to the “Predator” franchise every chance they got and a crossover with a huge budget along with the right director could be attractive enough for Arnold to get involved. A reminder, the studio was looking to move past Weaver since Ripley was dead and Schwarzenegger was hot as a pistol at the box office, Dutch was theoretically still alive and every “Predator” sequel since there have been attempts to have him appear.
“Something similar to what we did with Aliens. A bunch of great characters, and of course Sigourney [Weaver]. I’ve even discussed the possibility of putting him [Arnold Schwarzenegger] into the Alien movie,” Cameron told the BBC in 2003 about the possibility of adding Schwarzenegger to his “Alien 5.”
Paul W.S. Anderson begins shooting “Alien vs. Predator” in Prague at the end of 2003 and essentially kills “Alien 5,” finally ending the Ellen Ripley saga for good.
James Cameron pivots to “Avatar” and the film still holds the global box office record thanks to a re-release with four sequels on the horizon.
The original version of “Alien 5” would see Ridley Scott direct with Cameron producing and co-writing (possibly with “Alien Resurrection” screenwriter Joss Whedon writing too) and would take Ripley to the homeworld of the xenomorph. The project was never made, but Ridley Scott returned to tackle his prequel “Prometheus” attempting to explore the origin of Space Jockey (engineers) and was a producer on Neill Blomkamp‘s new “Alien 5” incarnation (approved by James Cameron) that would have acted as a direct sequel to “Aliens” (ignoring the other two sequels) before that also stalled, “Alien: Covenant” stepping in to fill the void.
Scott is currently producing Noah Hawley‘s “Alien” series at FX that will be set on Earth and return the franchise to its class warfare root. He’s also talked-up a third prequel film still being in the works that has previously used the working title of “Alien: Awakening.”
It looks like Shang-Chi won’t only have a connection to the Matrix trilogy, but the X-Men franchise as well. The Ronin can confirm that Marvel Studios indeed had Aussie cinematographer Ross Emery working as the second unit director alongside Destin Daniel Cretton on Marvel’s Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings.
If you’re unfamiliar with Emery, he was the director of photography on James Mangold’s gorgeous Japanese-set superhero flick The Wolverine and Ridley Scott’s popular sci-fi HBO Max series Raised By Wolves. He also previously worked as a second unit director on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant and with Shang-Chi cinematographer Bill Pope on The Matrix trilogy.
Second unit directors normally handle a bulk of the action sequences, Shang-Chi is being billed as superhero martial arts film and should be action-packed if the teaser trailer is any indication.
Shang-Chi’s main production took place in Sydney at Fox Studios Australia and there was some exterior shots in San Francisco too with additional photography in Los Angeles and England.
There could be an argument made that The Wolverine is the prettiest X-Men film from the 20th Century Fox era. Emery isn’t the only former X-Men franchise cinematographer working on MCU films, as The Ronin first reported that John Mathieson (X-Men: First Class, Logan) was selected by the studio to tackle Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness for director Sam Raimi.
We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Marvel bringing in James Mangold’s cinematographers to the Marvel Cinematic Universe means that the X-Men filmmaker will get another chance to adapt more Marvel characters in the future. It doesn’t hurt Mangold is already working with Disney by writing/director their big sequel Indiana Jones 5, which just started shooting this week at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom.
Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings will hit theaters exclusively on September 3.
SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS – Marvel Studios’ “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization.
Joining Simu Liu in the Marvel cast includes Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy, and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, and Ronny Chieng. Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and produced by Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz, with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, and Charles Newirth serving as executive producers. David Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham wrote the screenplay for the film, and experience it in theaters on September 3, 2021.
Earlier today, we revealed Marvel’s Secret Invasion series would be filming under the working title of Jambalaya during it’s production run in the United Kingdom.
There is even more potential news about the Skrull crossover event series as The Illuminerdi claims that British actress Carmen Ejogo has been offered a role in Secret Invasion. While The Illuminerdi has been right in the past it’s worth waiting until this casting tidbit is confirmed by a trade outlet before getting too excited.
Ejogo’s credits include Alien: Covenant, Fantastic Beasts, and Selma.
Secret Invasion’s impressive cast already consists of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelsohn as Skrull leader Talos, Oscar-winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite, Hot Fuzz, The Crown), four-time Emmy nominee Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones, Solo: A Star Wars Story), Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night In Miami, Peaky Blinders) said to be playing a villain, and most recent addition to the Marvel series is character actor Christopher McDonald (Hacks, Happy Gilmore).
We’ll also be patiently waiting to hear if cast members of The Marvels will be showing up in Secret Invasion.
Given that production is taking place later in the year, we shouldn’t expect to see Secret Invasion begin airing on Disney+ until late 2022 or early 2023.
Deadline reports that No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga will helm at least three episodes of the upcoming WWII series Masters of The Air for Apple TV+.
The wartime series will be produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, who were behind HBO’s Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Cary’s Parliament of Owls joins the producing team alongside Amblin Television and Playtone.
HBO passed on the expensive series and it eventually landed at Apple.
I previously reported that Alien: Covenant and X-Men: First Class production designer Chris Seagers would be working on the show. Seagers is no stranger to the WWII genre as he also worked on Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as an art director.
Here is a synopsis of the Donald L. Miller book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, which the series is based on.
Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.
Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured US air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.
The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America—white America, anyway. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.
Masters of the Air is a story of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.
Cary has worked on television before with the first season of the hit HBO series True Detective. He most recently directed the final Daniel Craig era Bond movie titled No Time To Die which that has been delayed a second time from November 20th to April 2nd, 2021.
While speaking with The Playlist, Alien: Covenant actress Katherine Waterston reaffirmed a desire to reprise the role of Daniels for another Alien prequel film, if her character is still alive.
PLAYLIST: Would you make another Alien movie?
WATERSTON: “In a heartbeat. I loved working with Ridley and I loved playing that part. I hope we can! I would love it! I hope she’s still alive!”
Katherine isn’t speaking out of school questioning if Daniels is still alive as they killed Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw off-screen when she was supposed to return in a bigger role originally in earlier incarnations of Alien: Covenant.
However, Ridley Scott spoke with Forbes recently where he suggested that if he makes another Alien film it might deviate from the last two installments and might not even connect to them.
SCOTT: “That’s in process. We went down a route to try and reinvent the wheel with Prometheus and Covenant. Whether or not we go directly back to that is doubtful because Prometheus woke it up very well. But you know, you’re asking fundamental questions like, ‘Has the Alien himself, the facehugger, the chestburster, have they all run out of steam? Do you have to rethink the whole bloody thing and simply use the word to franchise?’ That’s always the fundamental question.”
ALIEN: COVENANT – Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, members (Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup) of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think to be an uncharted paradise. While there, they meet David (Michael Fassbender), the synthetic survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition. The mysterious world soon turns dark and dangerous when a hostile alien life-form forces the crew into a deadly fight for survival.
Last year it was revealed that Legion and Fargo showrunner/creator Noah Hawley had attempted to pitch FX and 20th Century Fox a miniseries that takes place within the Alien universe before the merger with Disney. Unfortunately the executives didn’t bite and it never came together.
We now have some idea of what it would have looked like thanks to some interesting new comments from Noah. While speaking with the Observer, Noah seemingly was interested in exploring the themes and characters within the universe rather than simply the action and xenomorphs.
HAWLEY: “Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark 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!’”
As it stands there doesn’t seem to be any official movement on the Alien franchise. Ridley Scott keeps talking up a third Alien prequel that may distance itself from the last two installments and there has been a new Alien 5 aka Alien V script making the rounds from Walter Hill and David Giler. The pair of screenwriters previously worked on the first three Alien films.
I would have loved to have seen something new within the Alien universe and a series allows creative people a little more wiggle-room as you’re not completely focused on box office returns. Maybe down the line, Disney will revisit the idea of a series and push for it to land at Hulu/FX allowing to keep its mature tone.
Deadline is reporting that Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is already putting together another film at Universal Pictures after he completes Jurassic World: Dominion (expected to resume production next month at Pinewood Studios UK), which will seemingly stick to genre film making.
The project titled Atlantis is a thriller that will focus on the mythical lost society that has advanced technology. It’s story was development by Colin and Bridge of Spies screenwriter Matt Charman with a script penned by Dante Harper.
Atlantis is set on a lost continent in the Indian Ocean between Africa, India and Oceania. It is a multicultural civilization with its own advanced technology.
Atlantis has been done a lot in pop-culture and most recently was explored in James Wan’s DC Comics film Aquaman. There is expectation that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will also tackle their own version of Atlantis with the character Namor The Sub-Mariner.
Colin had been originally hired to write and direct the final installment of the new Star Wars trilogy before he exited over creative differences and his version Duel of The Fates didn’t make the rounds online until after the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Dante’s credits include the original Edge of Tomorrow script, worked on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, and most recently he tackled Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One follow-up Forever.
Trevorrow’s Metronome Film Co. will produce.
Jurassic World: Dominion was originally set to be released on June 11th, 2021 but delays might bump the sequel to a later date.
THE RONIN 