Alien: Romulus brought Ridley Scott’s space saga back to the big screen with one of the best movies in the Alien franchise in 2024. Now, Alien: Earth has put the franchise to the small screen for the first time on Disney+, and scored the best Rotten Tomatoes score of the franchise in the process. Set just before the events of the original 1979 movie Alien, the Noah Hawley-created series is breathing new life into the franchise for the second time in a year, and the writer/director recently reacted to the impressive reviews while speaking to ScreenRant.
“Well, what it tells me is that is that I succeeded in creating the feeling in the audience that I felt when I saw those first two movies. I’ve said it before, but the first film is a perfect film, and I think the second film is also. It’s a totally different film, but there’s something in the last 20 minutes of Aliens, you know, from the moment that she rescues Newt to the very end, that can only be described as thrilling. Literally, each step that she takes, things get worse, and she handles it, like the elevator and the Queen, and then Bishop’s gone, and then she’s in the in the loader. That level of unpredictable excitement.
My hope was, was to kind of invert it. Start with the action movie, transition into the horror movie, upend people’s expectation for the rhythms of what Alien is, right? And then, that moment that I feel like really lands for people in the back half of episode 3 and into episode 4 is you realize that the characters and the dynamics and the dilemmas, even without the creatures, is really fascinating. And then, when you put the creatures back in — I mean, elevated genre is the most thrilling thing to watch, period.”

‘Alien: Earth’ Is Evolving Into a Better Entry in the Franchise Than Anyone Hoped

Alien: Earth with a xenomorph attacking someone
FX Networks

When it comes to legacy sequels, there have been many recent belated additions to popular franchises of the 1980s and 1990s that have been moderately successful, but tend to rely on nostalgia to generate that success. Both Alien: Romulus and Alien: Earth, while featuring plenty of nods to the past, have managed to carve their own way in the world, bringing something new and exciting to a franchise fast approaching its 50th anniversary. Finding something new to say in a franchise that has even seen Ridley Scott struggling to get it right – we all know how many people feel about Prometheus and Alien: Covenant – meant that Hawley’s TV series and Fede Alvarez’s movie looked to be taking on an impossible task. Now, though, fans are excited about the Alien franchise again. A sequel to Romulus is already in development, and it is almost impossible to see Alien: Earth being a one-and-done series on Disney+, with the show having been sitting at the top of the streamer’s chart since its debut. Add in Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator franchise, and the potential for a better, more cohesive crossover between the two sci-fi sagas than their last attempt 20 years ago, and suddenly, the future of the Alien franchise is not only secured for the immediate future, but for several more years to come. Ridley Scott has also not ruled out his own return to the franchise with another prequel movie, and while that does seem unlikely to happen considering the other movies on the director’s slate, even without it, there is a lot to come in a franchise that everyone believed would be killed off in Disney’s hands after their merger with Fox.