The ’20s have seen a surprising and unprecedented revival (at least in quality) of the two main sci-fi/horror franchises in the 20th Century Studios stable. Zombie Fox dropped Prey back in 2022, which was dope as fuck, and this year they put out Alien: Romulus, the first mainline Alien sequel since Jim Cameron that didn’t require 15,000-word defenses or workprints to prove its worth. It doesn’t look like the fun’s gonna stop, either: Predator: Badlands, from the same creative team as Prey, will drop next year, a Romulus sequel is bound to be greenlit soon, and the Alien franchise will be making its way to the small screen next summer. That’s the long-gestating series from Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley, now titled Alien: Earth, which has been slowly drip-feeding new info to audiences over the last few months. This teaser makes one thing clear: this is a prequel, folks, set on, you guessed it, Earth.
Setting an Alien prequel on our fair planet feels, at first blush, like a pretty terrible idea. It’s set only two years before the Nostromo stumbled across a distress signal, and it seems like it’s both going to explain a little too much (one of the fun parts of these movies is wondering what the hell the Earth of this universe looks like) and undermine the strangeness of Ripley’s initial encounter with the Xenomorphs.
This is, after all, a franchise that had to fully declare two whole films non-canon to justify all the terrestrial shenanigans in the Alien vs. Predator series: Why drink from that well again? Anyhow, Hawley made his name taking bad ideas and spinning gold out of them, so we’ll hold judgment until we press play next year — and if it’s anything like this old-school teaser that FX dropped on Wednesday, we’ll probably have a fun time with it.
Peep it:
Here’s a short synopsis:
“When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.“
Alien: Earth will start streaming on Hulu sometime during the summer of 2025.