[Note: As part of a new conservation effort aimed toward preserving the internet’s increasingly overworked supply of stock Alien jokes, this Newswire will attempt to refrain from using any variants on “Game over, man,” “They mostly come at night,” and any speculation on what people can or cannot hear you do in space. We appreciate your patience at this time.]
Out of all of the media environments—films, comics, games, and more—that the endlessly adaptable Alien franchise has managed to slither its way into over the years, the one environ it’s never managed to infiltrate has been television. (The reason, presumably, having something to do with the the franchise’s star creatures and their dual need for consistently expensive special effects, and disposable human fodder to tear through on a regular basis.) That might be about to change, though, with ScreenRant reporting on rumors that there’s a television adaptation of Ridley Scott’s classic currently gestating somewhere in the lungs and brains of hopeful TV executives, apparently blind to the potential horror that they’re about to unleash.
This is all way out in the realm of the unformed and speculative—just like the Xenomorph cloning science from Alien: Resurrection, right? (Who says you have to only reference the first two films.) But supposedly, the rumors about the show have been slowly building since April. The franchise is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary, after all, even if its actual film prospects at the moment are on the lackadaisical side; although we enjoyed its hard sharp turn back into pure horror, last year’s Alien: Covenant was met with a critical and box office consensus best categorized as “Eh, fine,” which means nobody’s desperately keening for Scott’s proposed sequels about yet more evil Michael Fassbender robots wandering through space.
There’s no word yet on where this potential TV series might land, or even who’s actually working on it, though, so we’ll just have to wait and see what develops. (Said Ripley to the android Bishop.)