Alien franchise crafts new creatures for Alien: Earth TV show
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Sydney Chandler in Alien: Earth.
PHOTO: DISNEY+
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LOS ANGELES – Both new and familiar alien life forms lurk around in the Disney+ series Alien: Earth, based on director Ridley Scott’s original 1979 sci-fi horror movie.
“By bringing the story to Earth, we’re shifting to ‘can humanity itself survive?’ And then it becomes a question of ‘well, what is humanity, and do we really deserve to survive?’” the new show’s American director Noah Hawley says.
“These creatures that are coming are a kind of representation of the natural world reasserting its dominance, right? Reminding us that we’re still part of the food chain,” adds the creator of crime comedy-drama series Fargo (2014 to 2024).
Alien: Earth follows a group of travellers with various jobs who are drawn into action when a spacecraft carrying alien samples crash-lands on Earth.
It is set two years before the first Alien movie that introduced audiences to American actress Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley and the terrifying alien called a xenomorph.
Other than the xenomorphs that fans are familiar with, there are four other deadly creatures on the crashed spacecraft.
(From left) Series creator and director Noah Hawley; actors Babou Ceesay, Alex Lawther, Sydney Chandler, Samuel Blenkin and Timothy Olyphant; and executive producer David W. Zucker at the premiere of Alien: Earth in London on July 29.
PHOTO: AFP
“These creatures have some, to varying degrees, recognition factor,” said producer David W. Zucker.
“They’re sort of perverted versions of insects and otherwise that we can recognise. So, I think that brings it into an even more sort of visceral place – not to mention, touching upon certain sensations that we’re already familiar that they can invoke,” he added.
American actress Sydney Chandler (Don’t Worry Darling, 2022; Sugar, 2024) portrays the show’s lead Wendy, a metahuman with the body of an adult human and the mind of a child, who leads a team that also has adult bodies with childish minds, called The Lost Boys, onto the crashed spaceship.
“Kids are great acting teachers. They’re so present, they’re so honest, instinctual, they do what their body tells them to do or what their mind thinks of right away,” Chandler, 29, said, referring to her approach to Wendy’s child-like mannerisms. REUTERS
Alien: Earth is showing on Disney+.
