Alien vs. Predator anime series: more details have been revealed about the shelved show

In early 2020, we heard mention of an Alien vs. Predator anime series that had been made before the 20th Century Fox / Disney merger and never released. A few months ago, Joshua Izzo, who made Alien Day an official event while working at Fox, confirmed that an Alien vs. Predator anime series was produced, all ten episodes were completed, and now they’re just sitting in the Disney vault. Now the anime’s writers/consultants Dave Baker and Eric Calderon have revealed more details about the shelved series during an interview on the Best TV Never Made podcast!

The interview takes up two episodes, both of which can be found on the Best TV Never Made website. The show is hosted by Peter Holmstrom and Ryan Matsunaga.

Like Izzo said, the anime was originally envisioned as an adaptation of the Dark Horse Comics that followed the character Machiko Noguchi, and the idea was that three Machiko story arcs would play out over the 10 episodes, which could then be cut together into a trilogy of animated movies. The first episodes would be an adaptation of the Aliens vs. Predator comics, the next batch of episodes would be an adaptation of the follow-up Aliens vs. Predator: War, and then it would wrap up with a new Machiko story. Several scripts had been written for that approach when a director was brought in – and even though this director had never seen Predator, they wanted to come up with their own original story. They did happen to be a huge fan of Aliens, so there was going to be a lot of echoes of Aliens in this anime.

At first, the director suggested a story that would be set on a deep space freighter where an evil genius called The Game Master would gather Aliens, Predators, and humans together for a death match to find out who’s the strongest. Baker and Calderon convinced them to abandon that idea and figure out a different approach.

The podcast breaks it down for us: “The 10 episode series mainly focused on a teenage engineer who has to protect a young girl (around 6 years old) named Leen, very similar to the relationship between Ripley and Newt. This character is eventually discovered to be a genetically modified alien-human hybrid who can control aliens through pheromones. A b-plot follows Hank, a soldier type character modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch from Predator, who had an encounter with a Predator many years ago and has PTSD as a result of it. That Predator has now returned to conclude their battle. This Predator was dubbed Einhander as it has only one hand. It was inspired by the Predator named Ahab from the Dark Horse comics.“

And since the director was heavily influenced by Aliens, “the main human villain became a businessman type who betrays the main characters at a certain point.” The director wanted to call the character Douglas Fairbanks, but the name was shortened to Fairbanks when he found out that Douglas Fairbanks was the name of a famous actor.

Baker and Calderon never directly say the name of the director during their interview. To hear more details about the anime that we may or may not ever have the chance to see, and to hear all about their experience working on the project, head over to the Best TV Never Made website and listen to the Alien vs. Predator: The Anime episodes.

Do you hope to see the Alien vs. Predator anime someday? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.