The writers’ strike has been affecting every corner of Hollywood for months now, but now that the actors’ strike has been officially declared, even more projects will face complications. One of the most anticipated projects on the horizon is a television series based on Noah Hawley’s Alien, however a new report by Variety claims that due to the international nature of the project, only two main figures are in SAG-AFTRA, so the series will be filmed without their participation. Given that the writers’ strike has been going on for a long time, and there hasn’t been any significant progress in resolving it, the actors’ strike is likely to follow, so it’s completely unknown when this will all end.
The publication notes that the series is being pre-filmed in Thailand, and the cast includes members of SAG-AFTRA and Equity, possibly including the two leading actors, however, due to the scale of the series, elements of it may be filmed without them. Considering that a number of other films and TV shows have been completely cancelled, being able to film something for a series is still an advantage that other projects don’t have.
The Alien TV series was announced back in 2020, with the franchise being one of the interesting brands acquired by The Walt Disney Company through its purchase of 20th Century Fox. In addition to the series, a new film is being prepared, which recently wrapped production.
Hawley has previously talked about what will make his new TV series different from what happened on the big screen.
“The show is set on the Earth of the future. At the moment, I’m describing it as Edison vs. Westinghouse vs. Tesla,” Hawley explained in an interview with Esquire in 2022. “Someone is going to monopolize electricity. We just don’t know who… In the movies, we have the Weyland-Yutani corporation, which is no doubt also in the development of artificial intelligence, but what if there are other companies that are trying to look to immortality in a different way, through cyborg enhancements or transhuman uploads? Which of these technologies will win?”.
