New Alien TV show details revealed: it's daring to be different

More details have been revealed about the upcoming Alien TV show and it's set to diverge from what we have seen from the movies so far.

One of the highlights of Disney's Investor Day back in December was the surprise announcement of an Alien TV show. Now the Mouse House has the rights to the Alien universe, after it swallowed up Fox like the big content Cookie Monster it is, there were nerves as to what would become of the R-rated franchise.

We shouldn't have worried. The upcoming Alien TV show has one of the best show runners in the business. His Fargo series is sublime and Legion is still one of the best Marvel TV shows ever made.

It's fair, then, that Hawley's take on the Alien mythos would always be a bit left field. Well, now we know a little bit more.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, he revealed that he's trying something different to what Hollywood heavyweights Ridley Scott, James Cameron and David Fincher tried (successfully) with their movies. And the change is all about containment, or a lack of it.

"Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies," he says. "They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting."

Continuing, he reveals: "The Alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of 'What happens if you can’t contain it?' are more immediate."

Sounds intriguing, given the idea of not being able to contain something is playing out, worringly, in real time around all of us right now.

Hawley also answered the Ripley question - we all probably knew the answer but he confirms that the Alien TV show is not a Ripley story.

"She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it."

• 20 things you probably didn't know about Alien.