Yahoo Movies What’s next for the Alien franchise?
With the box office success of Alien: Romulus, there's plenty of future left in xenomorph carnage on the big screen.
The xenomorph is back. After a decade and change of Ridley Scott's prequel series and its associated ups and downs, Fede Álvarez's gory scarefest Alien: Romulus — a down-and-dirty new spin on the franchise — has turned things around.
Romulus earned some seriously strong reviews from critics — its Rotten Tomatoes approval score is way up at 82% — and also achieved the box office to match taking over $350m globally.
This makes is one of the biggest hits in the Alien franchise behind only Prometheus which took over $400m globally in 2011. With that in mind, Hollywood's business strategy requires that we look at what might happen next.
Alien: Earth
The one thing we know for sure is happening with Alien is that the franchise will soon make its TV debut with Alien: Earth. Fargo creator Noah Hawley has put together a stand-alone series, set three decades before the events of the original Alien movie. We don't know a huge amount about the story as things stand, but we do know that Sydney Chandler will play a woman with an adult body and the consciousness of a child.
Hawley has also compared his story to the war between Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla over electricity, which suggests that valuable new technology will hang in the balance for these characters. No doubt, the franchise's corporate baddies Weyland-Yutani will be involved.
The good news is fans won't have that long to wait for their next xenomorph fix as Alien: Earth will arrive in summer 2025. It's an FX production in the United States, which will stream on Hulu. That means UK viewers will stream it on Disney+.
Romulus sequel
In October 2024, 20th Century Studios boss Steve Abell confirmed that Alien: Romulus sequel talks had begun. "We’re working on a sequel idea now," Abell told The Hollywood Reporter. "We haven’t quite closed our deal with Fede [Alvarez], but we are going to, and he has an idea that we’re working on."
Read more: Alien: Romulus director shares 'brutally honest' Ridley Scott advice that helped film (Yahoo Entertainment)
This seems like a very logical move for a studio that has just made a decent chunk of money, but also means there could be problems around the Alien timeline. Romulus slots neatly into the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, which provides a relatively narrow window for more Romulus stories.
Abell teased that the story would likely explore what happened to Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson's Romulus characters next. He added "We know there’s going to be aliens. We know there’s going to be great horror set pieces. But I fell in love with both of them and I want to see what their story is."
Ridley Scott's prequels
The Alien franchise wouldn't exist at all without the exceptional work that Ridley Scott did on 1979's haunted house in space movie Alien. He has a lot of cachet when it comes to the world of the xenomorph, which is why he managed to convince 20th Century Fox to provide him with the cash to embark upon an ambitious series of Alien prequels, starting with 2012's Prometheus.
It's fair to say that these prequel movies, which explore the very origins of humanity as well as the birth of the xenomorph species, proved to be divisive among both audiences and critics. Prometheus and its 2017 follow-up Alien: Covenant fascinated some, while infuriating others.
Read more: Ridley Scott 'was never told or asked' about Alien and Blade Runner sequels (BANG Showbiz)
In the wake of Covenant, Scott remained bullish about continuing to make the prequels he needed to directly link this new series with Alien. But once Disney bought Fox, they decided to move ahead with Romulus instead — along with Alien: Earth — and Scott has gradually moved away on to other things. In 2020, he confessed that he might have to "rethink the whole bloody thing" if he were to make another Alien movie. We wouldn't hold out much hope for more from him.
Stand-alone stories
This is perhaps the most likely option, certainly given how Disney has treated the franchise thus far with Romulus and Earth. The Alien movies span more than 300 years, so there's plenty of real estate to fit in completely unconnected stories set within this world. Of course, fan service will inevitably be sprinkled in on occasion.
Read more: Alien: Romulus ends up being too faithful for its own good (Digital Spy)
The xenomorph is a truly classic movie monster and provides infinite storytelling possibilities for filmmakers who would relish the chance to play in this sandbox. It's entirely possible to make Alien movies forever without ever intruding on the world of Ripley, or even the Prometheus era of prequels.
You can't help but think that Disney will be very excited about that prospect. Between the X-Men, Planet of the Apes, and Alien, that Fox deal is starting to look like pocket change.
Alien: Romulus is streaming on Disney+.
