Unleash the TERROR

The iconic sci-fi franchise bursts onto the small screen in an explosive prequel series

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NEW SCI-FI

Alien: Earth

From Wed 13 Aug, Disney+ (first two eps from Wed 13 Aug, then weekly)

When Sir Ridley Scott's Alien hit cinema screens in 1979 with the tagline 'In space no one can hear you scream', it changed the landscape of sci-fi horror, bagged an Oscar for visual effects, and spawned a series of movie sequels.

Now, creator Noah Hawley is breathing fresh life into the franchise in a new eight-part prequel series, which boasts Scott as an executive producer, and promises to have us on the edge of our seats all over again.

'I've managed to have this niche of reinventing classic movies as TV shows,' says Hawley, who turned the Coen brothers' cult 1996 film Fargo into an Emmy-winning series. 'If I have a skill, I think it's in understanding what the original movie made me feel and recreating that. It's exciting to get into the world of Alien and discover that there's still so much storytelling we can do.'

Debuting on Disney+ this week with a double bill, Alien: Earth is set in 2120, two years before Alien, when five major corporations - Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, Threshold and Prodigy - run the world and vie for dominance.

The opening scenes introduce viewers to the crew of Weyland-Yutani's deep-space research vessel Maginot as they emerge from cryosleep. Yet, unlike Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her Nostromo shipmates in the original movie, they're intentionally carrying a menagerie of deadly alien species...

The action then accelerates after horrifying events on board Maginot cause it to crash back to Earth, landing on the property of the Prodigy Corporation, run by a billionaire named Boy Kavalier, who's creating the first synthetic-human hybrids.