The Alien: Earth Trailer Crawls Onto Our Screens

Yep, that’s Alien, all right.

Excitement is building for Alien: Earth, Legion and Fargo main man Noah Hawley‘s entry into the Alien universe. Now, historically, the Alien franchise has been a bit hit or miss, although which instalments are hits and which ones are misses is hotly contested. But Hawley’s a bit of a gun, so we’re pretty confident this one will go in the Win column.

Alien: Earth Trailer

What’s the plot?

Set a couple years before the original 1979 film, Alien: Earth sees a spaceship carrying a variety of alien lifeforms – including one particularly dangerous biomechanical specimen – crash on Earth. A team is sent to investigate, which includes Wendy, a child who’s had her mind popped into an artificial body to save her from a terminal illness. Horror presumably ensues.

Of interest to longtime Alien fans is that the series promises to dig into the larger setting of the films. Life on Earth has mostly been implied so far, with the Alien flicks taking place on various other far-flung planets and inevitably doomed spacecraft. Here, we’re getting a look at day-to-day life in a future dominated by five competing megacorporations – including the real villains of the series, Weyland-Yutani.

Who’s in it?

• Sydney Chandler as Wendy, a child whose mind is implanted into an adult synthetic body.
• Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic mentor
• Alex Lawther as soldier CJ “Hermit”,
• Samuel Blenkin as CEO Boy Kavalier
• Essie Davis as Dame Silvia
• Adarsh Gourav as Slightly
• Kit Young as Tootles
• David Rysdahl as Arthur
• Babou Ceesay as Morrow
• Jonathan Ajayi as Smee
• Erana James as Curly
• Lily Newmark as Nibs
• Diêm Camille as Siberian
• Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins

Casting on eye over those character names, a lot of them are drawn from characters in Peter Pan. At a guess, those are synthetics – or artificial people, if you prefer.

When’s it out?

Alien: Earth debuts on Disney+ on August 13 with a double episode premiere, and the next six eps dropping weekly.

What’s the vibe?

Pretty optimistic, gang! Whether Alien as a concept works in a serialised format is up for debate, but this attempt to push the franchise into new territory has us excited.