Our motion tracker has been pointed at Alien: Earth, the Alien franchise’s first-ever TV show, for months now. We can confirm that we’ve detected movement, and, man, this is a big signal!
Today, FX has revealed the definitive release date for Alien: Earth as August 12 at 8pm ET on Hulu. FX and Disney Plus will get the premiere at 8pm PT (August 13 for U.K. and Europe) – of course, this includes international territories with access to the services.
Created by Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo), the debut of this all-new show will consist of two episodes. Then we can expect one new episode to arrive each week until the series’ eight-chapter first season is complete.
Alongside the long-awaited premiere date announcement and fresh plot details (which we’ll get into below), the powers that be have also graced us with a batch of new set images:
The short synopsis reads as follows: “When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”
The latest details that come with the images confirm the setting is that of the year 2120, which is only two years before the events of the original Alien (and 16 years after the colonization ship Covenant found something on Origae-6). We don’t know yet if Ridley Scott’s divisive prequels will be acknowledged here, but one thing’s for sure: Xenos visited Earth before Ellen Ripley tried to prevent them from reaching our world.
According to the official blurb, Earth at this time is governed by five corporations: “Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold.” Cyborgs and synths (we’ve already known the latter for a while in the movie series) are common, yet the founder and CEO of Prodigy “unlocks a new technological advancement” in hybrids, humanoid robots infused with human consciousness. We have a feeling that the Xenomorphs won’t be the only evil threatening Earth.
The cast list is led by Sydney Chandler and Timothy Olyphant, and also include many other talents such as Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Sandra Yi Sencindiver, Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson, David Rysdahl, Essie Davis, Erana James, and Kit Young, among others.
If you’re still jonesing for more Alien – and since we haven’t invented cryotubes yet – then these 6 Easter eggs in the ‘Alien: Earth’ shorts will fill the time nicely.
