Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez will both write and direct a brand new Alien movie for Ridley Scott and 20th Century Studios, with Cailee Spaeny (The Craft: Legacy, Pacific Rim Uprising) set to lead the cast. Isabela Merced (Rosaline) has also joined the cast, we learned earlier this week, and The Hollywood Reporter brings us more casting news.
David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu have signed on, THR reports.
The project is described as “an original standalone feature,” and THR notes that Alvarez wrote the script with Rodo Sayagues (Evil Dead). Filming kicks off later this month.
THR adds, “Plot details are being kept in a cryochamber, but 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.”
“In this ninth entry in the immensely popular and enduring film series, a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
Ridley Scott, who of course directed the original classic in 1979 and later returned for prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, will produce the movie via his Scott Free banner.
On a related note, FX has a small screen Alien project in the works at the moment, a planned “Alien” television series from Noah Hawley. That’s expected sometime in 2023.
The Alien film franchise is currently six movies deep, with filmmakers including James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet bringing to the screen their own versions of the Xenomorph monsters that Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon gave birth to back in the 1970s. No word yet on Alvarez’s pitch for his own take on the material, but we expect more real soon.