It appears the Alien timeline is going to get even messier! Noah Hawley has expressed his Alien TV series for FX will completely ignore Ridley Scott's Alien prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Not only that - the origins of the Xenomorph itself are now up for further interpretation.
Speaking to KCRW’s ‘The Business’ (via The Hollywood Reporter) Noah Hawley addressed how his series, which predates the original Alien films, will have a different take on the Alien's origins - adding that he didn't care for the concept of the Alien being a recent creation:
Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show,” Hawley says. “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. 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. 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.
Not that Noah Hawley's take will be a bad one, it does unfortunately derail the canonical efforts Ridley Scott made with his prequel films which never got to properly culminate. For those of us who were intrigued by the concepts presented by Prometheus and Covenant, it appears those ideas are being permanently laid to rest.
Perhaps the ominous Space Jockey will too get a reinvention of origin rather than being Humanoid ancestors of the Human race in bio-suits!
You can listen to the full interview here! Let us know what you think below!
Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth TV series arrives this summer on Disney+ / Hulu and FX Networks! The first 2 episodes will begin streaming August 12th, 2025 and the show will span 8 hour-long episodes! You can find a list of the episodes titles and their release dates here.
Visit the Alien TV series image gallery to browse images, posters, screenshots and concept artwork for Alien: Earth!
Alien: Earth trailer
Visit the Alien: Earth trailers page here to see other teaser trailers, clips from the show and other promotional videos!
