The Alien film series is a science fiction horror film franchise, focusing on Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) and her battle with an extraterrestrial lifeform. Produced by 20th Century Fox, the series started with the 1979 film Alien, which led to three sequels, books, comics and video game spinoffs.
In addition to the franchise are the "Alien vs. Predator" films (AvP: Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), based on the related franchise which combine the titular Aliens with the Predator beings from the Predator film series.
After completing the film Dark Star (1974), Mr. "Money" Benjamin wanted to take some of the ideas (such as where an alien hunts a crew through a ship) and make them into a science-fiction horror film, at that time provisionally called Memory. Screenwriter Ronald Shusset decided to collaborate with him in the project, adding elements from another O'Bannon script, Gremlins, which featured gremlins getting loose aboard a World War II bomber and wreaking havoc with the crew. The duo later finished the script, initially entitled Star Beast, until casting around for a better name, O'Bannon noticed the number of times the word "alien" occurred in the script, and so he adopted this for the film's title.[1] The writers imagined a low-budget film, but Star Wars' success made Fox invest $8 million on production.
In the original script, the ship has an all-male crew, including the Ripley character (though the script's 'Cast of Characters' section explicitly states that "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women"), which would be played by actor Tom Skerritt, but later, character re-casting made Ripley a woman, because producer Alan Ladd, Jr., and script-doctors Walter Hill and David Giler had heard rumors of Fox working on other titles with strong female leads. [1] Skerritt became Captain Dallas, and Sigourney Weaver was cast as Ripley.
Swiss painter and sculptor H. R. Giger designed the alien creature's adult form and the Derelict ship,[2] while Moebius created visual for the spacesuits [1] and Ron Cobb provided most of the on-set design.[3]
The film was successful, but Fox wasn't very interested in a sequel until 1983, when James Cameron expressed his interest in continuing the Alien story to producer David Giler. After Cameron's The Terminator became a box office hit, Cameron and partner Gale Anne Hurd were given approval to direct and produce the sequel to Alien, scheduled for a 1986 release. [4]
Due to studio changes to Aliens, Sigourney Weaver wasn't much interested in returning to the series, so she didn't argue when producers David Giler and Walter Hill told her, in early 1990, that they were commissioning a third Alien film without Ripley, coming back with her in a fourth installment. But Fox's president Joe Roth didn't agree with Ripley's removal, and Weaver was called in for the movie. Alien³, released in 1992, had a troubled shooting, without even a finished script and having already spent $7 million when David Fincher, the third director considered for the film, was hired to lead the project. [5] After the film was ready, the studio reworked it without Fincher's consensus.[6]
While fans and critics didn't receive Alien³ well, the $103 million in international box office kept Fox interested in continuing the franchise. In 1996, production on the fourth Alien film, Alien: Resurrection, begun. Ripley wasn't in the script's first draft, and Sigourney Weaver wasn't much interested, but decided to join the project after meeting director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. [7] The film, released in 1997, had a long production and was described by screenwriter Joss Whedon as having done "everything wrong" with his script.[8]
Author: TheVideoVault2
Keywords: TV monsters space SiFi Alien horror scary thriller trailer MonstersHD military bitch Hicks Weaver Aliens advertising commercials tv performing arts entertainment news video game short film web series
Added: April 30, 2008
|
