Breathe a sigh of relief(?) as Ridley Scott approves of the new Alien movie from director Fede Alvarez that is said to be coming to the Hulu streaming service.
Alvarez reveals that he recently finished his director’s cut of Alien: Romulus (said to be the working title) and that part of completing the film includes getting the approval of the head producer, who happens to be Ridley Scott who directed the first film in the franchise.
Fede Alvarez recently spoke with Guillermo del Toro at the DGA Latino Summit 2023, where Alvarez confirmed that his director’s cut of the new Alien movie is finished and that he recently “had to go through the incredibly tense process of obviously sending it to Ridley Scott.”
“I wanted him to see it before anybody,” Alvarez said. “And everyone gave me the head’s up that Ridley is really tough. He’s really tough, particularly if it has something to do with his movies. He was really tough on Blade Runner [2049], which I thought was a masterpiece, and he had issues with it because it’s really hard for him because it’s his work.”
Alvarez continued, “I asked him about the new Top Gun and he’s like ‘meh.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he was like, ‘My brother’s was original and this is like eh.’ He really respected it, but you could see how tough he was. So I was like, ‘There’s no way I win this one.’”
Alvarez also reveals that he was “terrified” to meet Ridley Scott after completing the cut and said he didn’t want to get an e-mail with the legendary director’s response but wanted to meet Scott in person.
“Even if he didn’t ask for it, I was gonna go there and sit at a table and look at him and get it,” Alvarez said. “Even if he was gonna say, ‘You destroyed my legacy,’ I wanted to be in front of him and see him in the eye. I didn’t want to get an email where it says ‘Ridley says…’”
The good news is that everything worked out as Ridley Scott said the flick is “f’n great.”
“And then he walks into the room and he did say, ‘Fede, what can I say? It’s fucking great,’” Álvarez continued. “For me it was like… My family knows it was one of the best moments of my life to have a master like him, who I admired so much, to even watch a movie I made but particularly something like this… and talk to me for an hour about what he liked about it. One of the best compliments he said was, ‘The dialogue is great. Are you the writer?’ Yes!”
What is the Fede Alvarez Alien movie about?
Really not much is known about the film, but it’s said to have nothing to do with the previous films and will be completely separate and focus on a younger group of characters instead of how the previous films in the franchise focus on adults in corporate, militaristic, and scientific roles.
Per the studios behind the flick, Disney’s 20th Century Studios, the Alien: Romulus plot follows “a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim: Uprising) is the lead who is joined by David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Isabela Merced (Transformers: The Last Knight), Spike Fearn (The Batman} and Aileen Wu (Away from Home).
Alvarez is known to be a huge fan, and originally pitched the idea for the new Alien film to Ridley Scott years ago. So what happened is that Ridley Scott remembered the pitch and ended up reaching out to Alvarez to bring the new film to life on Hulu.
20th Century president Steve Asbell also previously said the new Alien movie was picked up “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch,” adding, “It was just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”
Regarding the release on Hulu, Asbell offered, “It’s not a film that has to be all things to all people with those gargantuan budgets. They get to be authentically what they are. And this is closer to its genre roots.”
