Cailee Spaeny plays the title character in director Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla, and she also happens to have a lead role in director Fede Alvarez’s upcoming addition to the Alien franchise, a film that may or may not be titled Alien: Romulus. That movie is on track for an August 16, 2024 theatrical release – and while talking with Variety‘s Michaela Zee, Spaeny revealed that the story is set between the events of the original Alien and its sequel Aliens.
Spaeny said, “It’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie. They brought the same team from Aliens, the James Cameron film. The same people who built those xenomorphs actually came on and built ours. So getting to see the original design with the original people who have been working on these films for 45-plus years and has been so much of their life has been really incredible. My first film (Pacific Rim: Uprising) was big-budget sci-fi. I feel like I’m going back to that world. And I have so much fun. I like trying to do as many different things as I can. So I swapped my high heels and my beehive for spacesuits and lots of wire work. … I love watching those old ‘70s, ‘80s action sci-fi films. And I’m such a fan of that IP and Sigourney Weaver. It’s legendary to get to be a part of it.“
Alvarez directed the new Alien film from a screenplay he wrote with his frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues. When the project was announced near the start of 2022, it was said that Alvarez pitched this idea to Ridley Scott years ago. Whatever the idea was, it stuck with Scott. So in late 2021, he called Alvarez and asked if he still wanted to make an Alien movie. Clearly, the answer was yes. 20th Century Studios division president Steve Asbell told The Hollywood Reporter that they picked up the project “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch. It was just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.“
It has been said that the story Alvarez and Sayagues crafted for this movie is not connected to the other films in the Alien franchise. It will show us what happens when “a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” The Hollywood Reporter noted, “as opposed to the other movies which focused on adults in corporate, militaristic and scientific roles, this now-ninth installment of the franchise will focus on a group of young people. On a distant colony, the group finds themselves in a fight for their lives with the titular alien, a creature known as a Xenomorph, whose race propagates by implanting eggs into people’s stomachs via face-huggers, with the juveniles eventually violently bursting out of the host’s chest.”
And as I said in the article where we compiled everything we know about this Alien movie, doesn’t the story about a distant colony being stricken with a Xenomorph problem sound a lot like what happened on LV-426 before Ripley and the Colonial Marines showed up in Aliens? Spaeny specifying that the movie takes place between Alien and Aliens makes it seem even more likely that Alvarez’s movie might be about the downfall of LV-426… We’ll have to wait and see.
Spaeny is joined in the cast by David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), Aileen Wu (Away from Home), and Isabela Merced (Rosaline).
This new Alien movie is coming to us from Momentum and 20th Century Studios, with Ridley Scott producing through his Scott Free banner. We originally heard that it was being made for release through the Hulu streaming service, much like the Predator franchise addition Prey that was released last year (and turned out to be one of the more well-received entries in that series), but then the plan changed to a theatrical release.
Are you interested in Fede Alvarez’s Alien movie? What do you think of it being set between Alien and Aliens? Let us know by leaving a comment below.