Noah Hawley sheds a little light on his pitch for an Alien TV series

Thanks to his exemplary work on Legion and Fargo, Noah Hawley has proven that he can do wondrous things on the small-screen, but that doesn't mean all of his projects will see the light of day. It was revealed last year that Noah Hawley had pitched the idea of an FX mini-series set in Ridley Scott's ALIEN universe, but that 20th Century Fox CEO Stacey Snider had shot it down.

In a recent interview with Observer, Noah Hawley discussed his STAR TREK film, which is now is stasis, but also dropped a tease regarding his pitch for the Alien mini-series.

Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark Trek. It’s 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," Hawley continued. "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!'" While Ridley Scott seems confident that the ALIEN franchise will continue on the big-screen even after Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, I do like the sound of Noah Hawley's pitch for the potential TV series. What do you folks think?

The fourth season of Noah Hawley's Fargo series will debut on FX on September 27th.