Noah Hawley's Alien show is officially called Alien: Earth, which, uh-oh
There goes the neighborhood, as the Fargo creator's long-anticipated Alien show finally gets a title
Although he’s been working on it for a couple of years at this point, Noah Hawley’s long-promised Alien TV show has been perpetually shrouded in secrecy for the duration of that period. (Beyond Hawley making it clear he’s not going to worry too much about Prometheus and Alien: Covenant while making it.) Previously, Hawley did let slip that the show would primarily be “Earth-based,” and now its official title is here to confirm that, yep, “There goes the neighborhood”: Alien: Earth.
This is per a Variety conversation with FX head John Landgraf, who’s riding high on a typically high pile of Emmy nominations for his various shows, and Hawley himself, whose Fargo represents a decent portion of said pile. Hawley noted that filming has now completed on the series, with him and his team heading into “the long post that gets into visual effects,” adding that “It’s a very big show, it’s nice to have some time with it.” Landgraf, meanwhile, has stated his hope that Hawley will write at least two seasons of the series before returning for another season of Fargo.
All of which still leads us to speculate what, exactly, the Earth aspect of the show’s title entails. We could totally see Hawley spending a ton of time planetside, exploring the details of the hellish life lived by people stuck working for companies like Weyland-Yutani. (We don’t get much of a glimpse of “domestic” life throughout the film series, with the most prominent bits being Ellen Ripley’s space-station recovery at the start of Aliens; Alien Vs. Predator and its sequel both take place on Earth, but that’s a) in the modern day and b) of questionable canonicity). On the other hand, we can’t imagine Hawley can get away with keeping his title creature off TV screens for too long, and given the explosive nature of how Xenomorphs breed, it could mean the show gets pretty apocalyptic pretty damn fast. (We refuse to countenance the idea that the show will take place after 1997's fairly silly Alien: Resurrections, which ends with robot Wynona Ryder and hybrid-alien Ripley landing near the unexplained wreckage of a disaster strewn Paris.)
No word yet on when Alien: Earth will actually make planetfall at FX.