Posted in: FX, Preview, TV | Tagged: alien, alien: covenant, fx, noah hawley, prometheus

Alien: Why Noah Hawley Isn't Using Prometheus, "Covenant" Backstory

Noah Hawley explains why an important backstory that played out in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant won't work for his FX series.

Anytime anyone announces they're doing anything within the universe of a beloved franchise, one of the first questions that fans have is how is all going to fit together. So when it was announced Noah Hawley (Fargo) & FX Networks were in production on an Alien series, it didn't take long for folks to start asking canon questions. So just how much of the previous cinematic efforts would influence Hawley's vision? Speaking with KCRW's The Business, Hawley revealed that the series – set on our planet approximately 70 years into the future (meaning it's set before Ridley Scott's classic film) – won't be building off an important backstory that played out in Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). In those films, we learn that the aliens were actually created by a race known as The Engineers to be used as bioweapons.

"Ridley and I have talked about this – and many, many elements of the show. For me, and for a lot of people, this 'perfect life form' – as it was described in the first film – is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago that's just inherently less useful to me," Hawley shared regarding his decision to look more to the first two films in the franchise for influence.

"And in terms of the mythology, what's scary about this monster, is that when you look at those first two movies, you have this retro-futuristic technology. You have giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards … You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of 'Alien,' which is supposed to take place in those movies' future. There's something about that that doesn't really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films," Hawley added. "And so that's the choice I've made — there's no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me."

The upcoming FX series stars Sydney Chandler (Pistol, Sugar) as meta-human Wendy, Alex Lawther (The End of the F*cking World) as soldier CJ, Samuel Blenkin (Black Mirror) as CEO Boy Kavalier, Essie Davis (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, The Babadook, Babyteeth) as Dame Silvia, Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger) as Slightly, Kit Young (Netflix's Shadow and Bone) as Tootles, and Timothy Olyphant (Justified: City Primeval) – possibly as Wendy's mentor trainer, a synth named Kirsh. In addition, the series stars Babou Ceesay (Guerrilla, Damilola), David Rysdahl (Fargo), Jonathan Ajayi (Wonder Woman 1984, Noughts and Crosses), Erana James (Uproar, The Wilds), Lily Newmark (Pin Cushion, Sex Education), Diêm Camille (Washington Black, Alex Rider 3), Adrian Edmondson (War & Peace, A Spy Among Friends), and Moe Bar-El (The Peripheral, Tehran).

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