'Fargo' Creator Noah Hawley Talks Bringing a Xenomorph to Earth

By Andrew Sanford | TV | September 16, 2024 |

Movie monsters have existed for over a century. Creatures both living and dead are plastered on a big screen to chill, fright, and delight you. The best of these monstrosities possess a life outside of film. They appear on lunch boxes, backpacks, and playing cards. Their likeness is recreated for Halloween costumes to varying levels of success. There are video games, candy tongues, plush dolls, wedding cake toppers, and whatever else you can find at Spencer’s Gifts, all designed with your favorite menacing monster in mind. But they don’t only jump onto store shelves, they sometimes make their way to television.

There have been plenty of better-to-be-forgotten attempts to bring your favorite murderous madmen to the small screen. Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees both had anthology series in their names that had little to do with the evil duo themselves. A 2003 series based on the film Tremors saw the popular Graboids terrorize Michael Gross on the SyFy network. But some have been more successful. Chucky has been making a splash on the SyFy network, continuing his murderous rampage with blood and camp galore. Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters was a fantastic Godzilla show (despite being light on Godzilla). Now, the Alien franchise will jump into the fray.

Alien is anything but dormant. Starting in 1979 with the original film, Alien has seen much success (and plenty of failure) in movie theaters. Original director, Ridley Scott, returned to his creation and made two prequel films set in the same universe he had created. This summer, Fede Alvarez released Alien: Romulus, a terrifying movie that attempted to bring the franchise into new territory. It succeeded by making interesting changes to the xenomorph that I will not mention here. What I will say is that it isn’t the only change the creature will face.

Alien: Earth will be released next year. Created by Fargo (the TV show) creator, Noah Hawley, the show will see the terrorizing Xenomorph bring its scary second mouth to our home planet. “There’s something about seeing a Xenomorph in the wilds of Earth with your own eyes,” the showrunner teased at the Emmy’s last night. “That is truly chilling to think of it moving here among us, and so I can’t tell you under what circumstances you’ll see that, but you’ll see it — and you’re going to lock your door that night.” While a change of scenery doesn’t guarantee new scares, I’m intrigued by Hawley’s excitement and his thoughts on working with the Xenomorph.

“What was really fun for me was to really engage with the creature, bring some of my own thoughts to the design while not touching the silhouette, because that’s sacrosanct,” Hawley noted. He will be playing in new territory, but embracing the history of the monster, explaining, “But some of the elements as we know, whatever the host is, informs what the final creature is. I just wanted to play around a little bit to make it as scary as it should be.”

Horror icons have had an easier time making the jump from film to television in recent years. Hopefully, the Xenomorph will have similar luck. I’ve yet to watch a season of Fargo I didn’t like (even if it wasn’t strong). Here’s hoping that Hawley can bring a similar magic to Alien.