I had zero faith that a TV series inspired by the Coen Brothers classic FARGO would be worth watching – but the show's creator Noah Hawley has delivered three seasons of great television set in the world the Coens established with their 1996 film, with a fourth season now airing on FX. Hawley was also creator on another FX show I haven't gotten around to watching yet, Legion, which was based on characters introduced in Marvel comic books. Hawley has earned a lot of acclaim for his work with existing characters and properties, and there's another existing property he wanted to dig into with a TV series: he pitched a show that would have been set in the world of the ALIEN franchise.
Speaking to Observer, Hawley explained the thought process behind his pitch:
Alien is sort of about humanity at its worst. There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.’ If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it. I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s aliens!’"
I would be very interested in seeing an ALIEN project headed up by Hawley, but it doesn't sound like the series idea is moving forward. Ridley Scott recently said that a new ALIEN movie is in the works.
Paramount hired Hawley to write and direct a STAR TREK film that doesn't look like it's going to go into production any time soon, either. But at least we still have Fargo to watch.