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Fargo Future Could Be Impacted By Alien Series Success: FX Boss

FX Networks boss John Landgraf explained how the success of Noah Hawley's Alien series could directly impact future seasons of Fargo.

Between a fifth installment of FX's Juno Temple & Jon Hamm-starring Fargo that received huge critical & viewer praise and his dive into the Alien universe currently in production (for a 2025 premiere), it's safe to say that Noah Hawley and FX Networks are having a pretty successful time together. But when it comes to when viewers can expect another season of the former, FX Networks' John Landgraf shared during today's TCA 2024 Winter Press Event that it all depends on how well the latter does.

"[Alien] is a big imaginative reimagining of that franchise. It was really fun to watch [Noah] take on the 'Alien' franchise in the way I watched him take on 'Fargo,' to try to figure out how to deconstruct where the magic of it comes from and what were the key ingredients and how he can deliver those ingredients in a different way without just repeating things that have been done before," Landgraf shared. "It's designed to be an ongoing series. Then as far as 'Fargo' goes, it's a matter of timing because I'm hoping Noah's going to be working subsequent seasons of 'Alien' and really try to turn that around fast. But my ears always perk up when he says he's interested in approaching more 'Fargo' and I think he did an incredible job this year with season five."

Previously, Hawley explained why his series won't be beholden to the backstory that played out in Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) – where we learn that the aliens were actually created by a race known as The Engineers to be used as bioweapons. For this go-around, Hawley revealed that FX was eyeing the series as a recurring one and not a limited one, giving him the opportunity to "breathe" creatively while telling his story. "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," Hawley shared during an interview with Collider.

"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," Hawley further explained. "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.'"

So will Hawley end up spending some time behind the camera to helm an episode or two? While he makes it clear that it's still too early to make that call, it's not something that Hawley's opposed to. "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," he added. "It's really thrilling."

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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