Latest news with #Alien
Vogue
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Keisukeyoshida Tokyo Spring 2026 Collection
'Rest and Relaxation' was the title of Keisuke Yoshida's show this season, which took place on a muggy summer night at Estnation, a fashionable department store in Roppongi Hills (and one of the designer's stockists). A foreboding bass thrummed and whined over the speakers, rattling the light fixtures as the models came out, their office pumps clacking on the store tiles. What had Yoshida devised for his woman this time? She was certainly in need of some R&R. Her jeans had their pockets pulled up into the waistband, the sides sagging and the front buttons intentionally open (but still secured with an unseen popper), suggesting a state of undress, while slim-fitting suit trousers clung tightly to the thighs. Upside down camisoles, a recurring motif in Yoshida's collections, were turned into skirts, their straps dangling over the legs, while other pleated skirts were twisted at the knees. Office blazers had their lapels warped and rumpled, or were given belt loops at the neck with leather belts hanging at the shoulders—a smack of the designer's trademark sadism, though his usual spiky pin heels had been swapped for relatively low, beaten-up pumps. Halfway through the show the mood shifted. Models appeared wearing folded straw hats known as kasa, traditionally worn by dancers during the Obon festival, held to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. Painted black and pulled forward to obscure the models' faces, they took on a threatening aura, evoking something between an Irving Penn photograph and Ridley Scott's Alien, and were worn with pencil skirts and blouses, some of which extended into strips that wrapped across the throat. He also collaborated with the graphic designer Tom Tosseyn, known for his work with Raf Simons, on the subtly embroidered 'KY' logos that gave some of the pieces the air of spa uniforms. 'I tried to look at the current era from a bird's-eye view,' he explained backstage afterwards. 'It's busy, there's a lot of information, you work all the time, and you're exhausted.' The disciplined but intentionally disheveled pieces told a story of the human vulnerability that even the most buttoned-up woman can't stop from seeping out at times. 'I imagine an independent woman, but deep inside she has some pain she is carrying, or some tiredness she is hiding. But even so, I think she lives a strict life, and I wanted to make that part beautiful as well,' he said. It was classic Keisuke: twisted, perverse, commanding, and glamorous. The designer knows well how to project his own fantasy, how to create a character that feels fully formed. What he is still figuring out is evolving this fantasy into something more women themselves will actually want to embody.
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Alien: Earth to Wednesday: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this August
From the first ever Alien series to the new run of Netflix's Addams Family spin-off and a true-crime drama about Amanda Knox. 1. Chief of War Jason Momoa used his Aquaman clout to get this colourful historical epic made. He co-created and co-wrote the series, and plays Ka'iana, a warrior in 18th-Century Hawaii who is trying to unify the islands before colonists take control. If the subject is unexpected from the star of mainstream commercial films including the recent hit The Minecraft Movie, the action is on brand. Combining large-scale battle scenes with history is a formula that worked for Shogun, and Chief of War has a similar dynamic, and a grounding in authenticity. The cast is mostly Polynesian, and Momoa, who has born in Hawaii, had to speak the Hawaiian language, Olelo, for some scenes. Learning it, he told GQ, was "The hardest thing I have done in my life." The series co-creator, Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, has said, "We actually had this idea a good 10 years ago," but, he added, "We knew that in order to pull off something like this, Jason needed to bring his star power up". Chief of War premieres 1 August on Apple TV+ internationally 2. Eyes of Wakanda Black Panther director Ryan Coogler's production company is behind this latest Marvel animated series, which fits neatly into that film's universe as it follows Wakandan warriors at various points in history. Traveling the world, they put themselves at risk to retrieve artifacts containing the rare, powerful metal vibranium – that energy-absorbing material that has caused such a fuss in so many Marvel movies – stolen from Wakanda. Each of the four episodes has a different story and setting. The one set in ancient Greece has a disgraced former member of Wakanda's all-female army, the Dora Milage, tracing a man known as the Lion, who attempts to build a kingdom on the strength of stolen vibranium treasure. Todd Harris, the series' showrunner, told EW that his ambition was to create "a giant spy-espionage story that reverberates through time". Eyes of Wakanda premieres 1 August on Disney+ internationally 3. Wednesday In the second season of Jenna Ortega's breakout hit, young goth Wednesday Addams, returns to Nevermore Academy, and there are some starry additions to the cast. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman are back as Wednesday's loving parents, Morticia and Gomez. Among the added characters, Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) plays Morticia's mother, who has the Dickensian name Hester Frump (she is not a frump; she's glam). Billie Piper plays a music teacher, Isadora Capri, who is mentor to Wednesday's best friend, Enid (Emma Myers) – appropriate since they are both werewolves. And Steve Buscemi plays the school's oddball new headmaster, Barry Dort. He is featured in the show's best teaser, which plays off Buscemi's classic meme from 30 Rock, "How do you do, fellow kids", so you can see that the show's mordant wit is intact. Tim Burton directed several episodes. The season's second half drops in September and you'll have to wait until then for Lady Gaga's guest appearance. Wednesday premieres 6 August on Netflix internationally 4. Outlander: Blood of My Blood The wildly popular Outlander is heading toward its eighth and final season soon, but the series is also moving backwards in time – and keeping the franchise alive – with this prequel, which tells the stories of the parents of Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan). In the early 18th-century Jamie's father, Brian (Jamie Roy) courts Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater). During World War I, Claire's mother, Julia (Hermione Corfield) falls for Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine). But, like parents like daughter, the 20th-century couple can time travel and they land in the 18th Century, where they are separated and have to find each other again. Whatever the show turns out to be, you can already see that the casting and makeup people did a terrific job. Roy is a virtually a Heughan lookalike, and Corfield convincingly looks like she passed her profile on to her daughter. TV Insider writes that, true to the original and the Diana Gabaldon novels it's based on, the series is full of "sexy fun and clan intrigue". Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres 8 August on Starz in US and 9 August on MGM+ in the UK 5. Alien: Earth Noah Hawley, who pulled off the unlikely feat of turning the Coen brothers' beloved Fargo into one of the best television series of recent years, has another go at a film adaptation with this prequel to the Alien franchise. The show is set in 2120, two years before the events of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), when a spacecraft that that has been collecting samples of life forms from other planets crashes on Earth. Deadly creatures including, but not limited to, the drooling xenomorph that likes to leap out of humans' chests are let loose. As if that's not creepy enough, the heroine, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), is a young girl with a terminal illness whose consciousness has been transferred into a humanoid robotic body, and Timothy Olyphant plays her synthetic mentor, a robot with artificial intelligence. The power plays of competing tech companies comprises one theme, but Hawley has also said of the style, "If we want to make Alien something's got to be dripping. Something's got to be rusty". Alien: Earth premieres 12 August on Hulu in the US and 13 August on Disney+ in the UK 6. Butterfly Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) stars in this spy thriller as David Jung, a former US intelligence agent who has returned to South Korea to save the grown daughter, Rebecca (Reina Hardesty), who has believed him to be dead for nine years. She is now a trained assassin, just like her dad, and works for a nefarious private intelligence company called Caddis. David actually founded Caddis but the company is now run by the lethally ambitious, mercenary Juno (Piper Perabo), who wants him dead. The cat-and-mouse game of loyalties includes some sardonic lines from Rebecca, always ready to undercut her father's sentimentality. Much of the series is set in South Korea, and when the production was announced Kim, who is also one of the series' producers, called it "the realisation of a lifelong dream to bring together American and Korean storytellers and create a show that bridges two cultures that I love deeply". Butterfly premieres 13 August on Prime Video internationally 7. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox In this fact-based fiction, Grace Van Patten (Tell Me Lies) plays Amanda Knox, the young woman at the centre of an especially high-profile crime and punishment saga. "Many people think they know my story, but now it's my turn to tell it," the fictional Amanda says in the trailer. The real Knox has told her story before, cooperating with a 2016 Netflix documentary and writing two books, and it is full of twists and turns. Knox, then an American student in Italy, was convicted of the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, only to have the verdict overturned, then to be tried again in absentia, convicted and exonerated again. The fictional approach allows the series to heighten that already dramatic tale. Sharon Horgan plays Knox's mother in the series, which was created by KJ Steinberg. She was a writer on This Is Us, and so must know something about portraying emotional trauma. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox premieres 20 August on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK 8. Hostage Suranne Jones (Vigil, Gentleman Jack) is the British Prime Minister, Abigail Dalton, and Julie Delpy (Richard Linklater's Before trilogy) is the President of France, Vivienne Toussaint – a satisfying alt-history in itself. The series becomes a political thriller when the PM's husband is kidnapped and held hostage during Toussaint's state visit to London. To complicate matters, the French president is being blackmailed. The two world leaders, wary rivals, have to work together to get out of this mess, which comes to include an explosion at 10 Downing Street and the PM saying on television, "I will not negotiate. My loyalties are to my country. I will not allow it to be held for ransom." The series was created and written by Matt Charman, who also created the Netflix espionage series Treason and co-wrote Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, similarly themed thrillers in which the political becomes intensely personal. Hostage premieres 21 August on Netflix internationally 9. Long Story Short Bojack Horseman, the animated satire about a has-been TV star who happens to be a horse, was both popular and critically acclaimed, with Rolling Stone calling it one of the best television shows of all time. That means there are high expectations for this series from the same creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg. This time he's dealing with humans, the Schwooper family of three siblings, in a show that moves back and forth in time between their childhood and adulthood. The comedy reveals how little some grown-ups have changed from the kids they used to be, especially when they are squabbling in the back seat of a car. Max Greenfield is the voice of Yoshi, Ben Feldman is Avi, and Abbi Jacobson is Shira, their purple-haired sister. Paul Reiser and Lisa Edelstein play their parents. "This show is not going to be as cartoony or as bleak" as Bojack, Bob-Waksberg has said, although "there are certainly cartoony elements". Long Story Short premieres 22 August on Netflix internationally 10. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Like Jack Ryan and Reacher, The Terminal List is a Prime Video series that has never become a cultural touchstone but has definitely drawn an audience of fans, with Chris Pratt as James Reece, a US Navy Seal commander coming to grips with an operation gone wrong. A second season of that original show is already in the works. This new military drama is a prequel about Ben Edwards, played by Taylor Kitsch, who in the original was a Seal turned CIA agent. He came to a bad end there, but he had his reasons, which the prequel explores. Set seven years earlier, the story follows Edwards as he is discharged from the Seals and drawn into the shadowy CIA world. Pratt has a supporting role, as Edwards and Reece train troops in Iraq and develop a bond. To say the friendship eventually frays is understating things, but in Dark Wolf that is far in the future. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf premieres 27 August on Prime Video internationally -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
New on Hulu in August 2025 — all the new shows and movies to watch
Hulu's August lineup features a fresh batch of brand-new movies and shows to add some streaming excitement to your summer. Some of the biggest releases of the month include the long-awaited 14th season of classic animated series "King of the Hill," which returns after 15 years with all 10 episodes dropping in one fell swoop on the platform. True crime fans will get a gripping new perspective on the Amanda Knox scandal with a limited drama series starring Grace Van Patten as the wrongfully convicted murder suspect. And sci-fi diehards can enjoy a prequel series to the famed "Aliens" franchise. Below, we've listed out three top picks of what's coming to Hulu this month (and what should be added to your watch list soon), plus a complete list of everything new on Hulu in August 2025 (and what's leaving the streaming service soon) so you can plan your viewing accordingly. Fifteen years after Mike Judge's classic adult animated sitcom was cancelled by Fox, "King of the Hill" returns with brand-new episodes on August 4. Per Hulu, the synopsis for season 14 of the Emmy-winning series — which stars Judge, Kathy Najimy, Pamela Adlon, Johnny Hardwick, Stephen Root, Lauren Tom and Toby Huss — reads: "After years working a propane job in Saudi Arabia to earn their retirement nest egg, Hank and Peggy Hill return to a changed Arlen, Texas, to reconnect with old friends Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Meanwhile, Bobby is living his dream as a chef in Dallas and enjoying his 20s with his former classmates Connie, Joseph and Chane." Stream on Hulu from August 4 Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. The fan-favorite "Alien" film franchise is getting the small-screen treatment with this new prequel series written and directed by Noah Hawley of "Fargo" fame, which is coming to FX and Hulu on August 12. "When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat," reads the official synopsis of the sci-fi series, which features actors Sydney Chandler, Samuel Blenkin, Timothy Olyphant, Sandra Yi Sencindiver, Alex Lawther, Kit Young and Babou Ceesay, among others, in the cast. "As members of the crash recovery crew search for survivors among the wreckage, they encounter mysterious predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined," continues the show description. "With this new threat unlocked, the search crew must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it." Stream on Hulu from August 12 Every fan of the titillating true-crime genre knows the name of Amanda Knox and the shocking legal case — in which she was wrongfully convicted for the tragic murder of her roommate — she was embroiled in 15 years ago. Inspired by that true story, this drama series follows Knox's decade-plus-long fight to clear her name, with actress Grace Van Patten portraying Knox in the eight-episode limited series. With Knox herself serving as an executive producer on the series, "each episode unpacks pivotal moments — the investigation, forensic interpretations, the court of public opinion holding forth in the headlines — to ultimately reveal how an innocent student reclaimed her life," per the streaming service. Stream on Hulu from August 20 August 1 August 2 August 4 August 5 August 7 August 8 August 9 August 10 August 11 August 14 August 15 August 16 August 17 August 19 August 20 August 21 August 22 August 23 August 24 August 25 August 26 August 27 August 28 August 29 August 1 August 7 August 9 August 13 August 16 August 18 August 21 August 23 August 24 August 25 August 31
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
‘Alien' lands at Comic-Con
The highly anticipated science fiction series 'Alien: Earth' officially landed at Comic-Con in California on Friday, where thousands of fans watched the pilot of a new TV series in the franchise. The pop culture convention held annually in San Diego was the chosen setting for the world premiere of the FX series created by Noah Hawley. 'This is by far the biggest thing I've ever made,' Hawley told 6,500 cheering fans in Comic-Con's Hall H before presenting the first episode, which he also directed. And in Hall H -- unlike in space -- you could hear them scream. 'It was crazy!' squealed Nicole Martindale, a fan of the franchise who traveled from northern California for the event. 'It wasn't what I expected based on the Alien movies, but it was pretty cool,' she added. 'Alien: Earth' is set a couple of years before the events of Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 film starring Sigourney Weaver. Scott served as executive producer of this expansion of the franchise, which will hit streaming platforms in August. 'If I have a skill at adapting these films, it's in an understanding what the original movie made me feel and why, and trying to create it anew by telling you a totally different story,' Hawley told the audience. The panel also featured stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Babou Ceesay and Samuel Blenkin, who discussed what it was like to become part of the storied franchise and share a scene with the Xenomorph. 'It's a dream, it was surreal,' said Chandler, who plays Wendy, a 'hybrid' who is a blend of human consciousness and a synthetic body. 'I've been a sci-fi and 'Alien' fan forever. I keep pinching myself.' US actress Elle Fanning attends the Predator: Badlands panel in Hall H of the convention center. US actors Jared Leto (left) and Jeff Bridges speak onstage at the Tron: Ares panel in Hall H of the convention center. Predator stands onstage at the Predator: Badlands panel in Hall H of the convention center. 'Tron' One of the world's largest celebrations of pop culture, Comic-Con brings together 130,000 people, many of whom come dressed as wizards, princesses or characters from movies, games or TV series. This year, the lines to enter Hall H have been less frenetic than in previous editions. Fans accustomed to camping out at the gates of the venue to get a spot inside say the lack of a big Marvel Studios presence has eased the crush. 'Last year, we arrived the night before and had to wait hours to get' in, said Carla Gonzalez, who has attended the event every year with her family since 2013. 'This year the first panel is about to start, and there are still empty chairs. If Marvel were here, it would be packed,' she added. There was still plenty for afficionados to get excited about, including a panel on 'Predator: Badlands' directed by Dan Trachtenberg and set to hit US theaters in November. 'There is something really special about strapping into something... and having no idea what will happen next, and that's 'Badlands',' Trachtenberg said. Trachtenberg, responsible for revitalizing the franchise with 'Prey' (2022), appeared alongside stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who plays the Predator, Dek. The production places the predator at the center of the plot for the first time as prey, not hunter. 'He is ferocious and bad ass, and very much an anti-hero,' Trachtenberg said. Actors Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges and Greta Lee and the team from 'Tron: Ares' also delighted fans. The film, directed by Joachim Ronning, is the third installment of another beloved science fiction franchise which began in 1982, with Bridges playing a hacker who becomes trapped in the digital world. Comic-Con concludes on Sunday. — AFP
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The future of Alien, without Sigourney Weaver
In space, no one can hear you scream. But what about down here? Well, we're about to find out. Having spent seven movies in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, the Alien franchise, begun by Ridley Scott in 1979, is about to be, quite literally, brought down to Earth. In Noah Hawley's upcoming Disney+ TV series, Alien: Earth, a research vessel owned by the megacorp Weyland-Yutani, familiar from the films, crash-lands into the Bangkok of 2120 (two years before the events onboard the spaceship Nostromo in the first Alien film). The crash brings HR Giger's unmistakable Xenomorph, plus a whole host of other nasty intergalactic beasties, to our planet. The snappy new tagline tells you all you need to know: 'We were safer in space.' Hawley – the writer-director known for his innovative take on Marvel superheroes in Legion and his daring extension of Coen Brothers' lore in the Fargo anthology series – has given the sci-fi horror franchise another twist. Alongside the familiar 'synths' – the unsettling androids made famous in the franchise by Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen and (in the Prometheus films) Michael Fassbender – and cybernetically enhanced 'cyborgs' (humans with hi-tech additions), Hawley has introduced an even more troubling creation: the 'hybrid'. These are synthetic beings downloaded with human consciousness, created by a shadowy corporation named Prodigy. In this case, the consciousness of a group of terminally ill children, who become known as 'the Lost Boys'. Forget Alien, this is Frankenstein for the 21st century. 'The first idea when I started thinking about Alien was the fact it's not just a monster movie,' says Hawley. 'The Ian Holm reveal – that he was a synthetic. He was artificial intelligence, and that artificial intelligence was trying to kill them.' When Hawley began writing the show, 'ChatGPT didn't exist', but the series' central question about our reliance on and suspicion of AI has become eerily prescient. 'It's like Noah saw into the future,' says Sydney Chandler, who plays Wendy, the leader of the Lost Boys and the central figure of Alien: Earth. It is the past, however, that has inspired Hawley. The look and feel, particularly in the opening scene, is pure 1970s. Andy Nicholson, the production designer, pored slavishly over the original two films (1979's Alien and James Cameron's 1986 follow-up Aliens). He used the Nostromo as a blueprint for the vessels and taking inspiration from 1970s Italian furniture and car interiors. 'We decided it should be the future as imagined in 1979,' says Nicholson, 'and not to go in the direction of Prometheus'. Scott, an executive producer on the project, was happy to let them get on with it. 'Every time I spoke to him, he was storyboarding,' says Hawley. 'First House of Gucci, then The Last Duel, and then Napoleon. He made at least three movies while I was making one season of television.' Both Hawley and Nicholson are careful not to criticise Scott's Prometheus movies, but it's clear they want a clean break from them. 'The 1970s movie-ness of Ridley's film and the very 1980s movie-ness of Cameron's film, those were a big part of it for me,' says Hawley. 'Prometheus is a prequel, but one in which the technology feels thousands of years more futuristic. So I had a choice. And there was just no way to make Alien without the retrofuturism of technology.' Indeed, much of the look has stuck so closely to the first two films' concepts that many of the original designers have been given production credits on Alien: Earth. This is seen most starkly in the very first few minutes of the show, which begins just as Alien did, with a group of workers on board a vessel bound for Earth, the Weyland-Yutani owned Maginot, waking up from cryostasis. The aesthetic – from the furnishings and computer graphics to the sweaters and the moustaches – is pure 1979. 'I really wanted to send a message that the movie I was most inspired by was Ridley's,' explains Hawley. Even Jeff Russo's soaring score apes that of Jerry Goldsmith's memorable intro music – with a twist. 'You want to pay homage to what came before and yet also forge a new identity – that's the trick, right?' says Russo. As we approach the Maginot, Russo's orchestral title track is assailed by distortion and, most disturbingly, human voices. It's Alien, Jim, but not as we know it. Soon the Maginot, and its mason jars of alien lifeforms, are lying in pieces in Prodigy City, 'New Siam', on a sweltering Earth. Those lifeforms were the major challenge. Hawley decided they could not simply rely upon Giger's world-famous, biomechanical Xenomorph. Nicholson felt the pressure: 'The Xenomorph was the scariest space creature you'd ever seen. And these creatures had to be worse.' Before the Maginot goes down in flames, we see the jars and glass boxes filled with all sorts of primordial, unearthly beings. 'The first movie is rooted so much in body horror and a genetic revulsion about parasites,' says Hawley, 'and this really uncomfortable, pseudosexual, penetrative design aesthetic. So I just went with: what is the worst thing? What makes me the most uncomfortable or repulsed or disgusted?' The answer, seemingly, lies in a creature known as T Ocellus, a grotesque, tentacled octopus/jellyfish thing that seems to be made out of eyes. 'That was the one,' says Nicholson, wincing. 'I saw the design and thought, 'Oh God, who came up with that?'' The jury is out on whether it is the creatures that will scare the living daylights out of viewers or whether it will be Boy Kavalier, a 20-year-old tech trillionaire played by Samuel Blenkin who runs Prodigy and has created the synthetic-human hybrids. In the world of Alien: Earth, humanity is controlled by five megacorporations who, in the style of the East India Company, have largely usurped democratic governments. The companies are in an arms race for control of the Earth, the known galaxy and the future of human life itself. Thus when Weyland-Yutani's ship crashes into Prodigy City, Kavalier smells an opportunity. An unscrupulous tech CEO with a god complex? Which real-life equivalent could Hawley have been thinking of? All of them, he says: 'It's narcissism that defines so many of these figures. The 'Great Man' has come back. And yet in many ways none of them want to grow up. If there's a metaphor between our show and our present moment, it's when you look around at all the really deep, complicated, intrinsic problems that we're having on this planet. What they really require to solve them is adults.' Not wanting to grow up is key to the Peter Pan-obsessed Kavalier, who has named his research facility Neverland and reads the book to the children each night. When they transition to their synthetic bodies, Kavalier rechristens them all from JM Barrie's story – alongside Wendy, there's Slightly, Tootles, Curly, Nibs and Smee. Kavalier, of course, is The Boy Who Never Grew Up. 'He likes that analogy,' says Hawley. 'Peter Pan is a dark book. There's a moment where Peter is angry and frustrated, so he breathes in and out as quickly as he can, because he believes that every breath he takes kills a grown-up. And it is implied that as the Lost Boys mature, he 'thins them out', to keep that out of his world. And those elements felt like they fit, thematically.' Chandler's Wendy is the first of the Lost Boys to transition and acts as a big sister to the others as they get used to their new – adult, superhuman, immortal – bodies. Chandler, the 29-year-old daughter of actor Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights, Bloodline), is a relative unknown, yet was determined to land the role. She flew out to Canada, where Fargo was being filmed, the morning after reading the script, and convinced Hawley to let her take him for dinner. Her determination (she calls it 'impulsivity') and passion for the role impressed him. It's a great piece of casting – Chandler imbues Wendy with an otherworldly gawkiness, a disarming innocence and an unnerving unknowability. The actress, understandably, wishes to avoid comparison between Wendy and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley. 'You can't recreate Alien. You can't recreate Ripley. If the scripts had gone in that direction, I wouldn't have wanted to do it. My goal was to bring as much strength and honesty and integrity and backbone to the character [as I could], because that's what I looked up to when I saw Alien for the first time.' For all the ingenious concepts within Alien, what underpins the franchise is human greed and the extent to which corporations are happy to play God. Like all classic sci-fi, the humans in the TV series unleash forces they can no longer control. Does Hawley feel that, via AI, we are at such a point now? 'I don't think AI is going to take my job,' he says. 'But I'm at a rarified level of storytelling, with an idiosyncratic approach. [However] I think if you are a writer on Law & Order, you should be worried.' But Hawley has bigger concerns, and they can be seen in the blood, guts and synth fluid of Alien: Earth. 'Europe does a much better job of regulating technology and thinking about the human implications of it. In the US, it's still about the dollar. And I worry there are no brakes on this train, because the people who would be the brakes are not incentivised to slow it down. I worry it's going to get away from us very quickly. If it hasn't already.' Alien: Earth comes to Disney+ on August 13 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
