“I tried to play this game”: Alien: Romulus Director Fede Álvarez Played a Genius Mind Trick on Ridley Scott To Get the Icon to Like His Film’s Script
- Fede Álvarez revealed how did he got Ridley Scott in liking Alien: Romulus' script.
- The filmmaker says he hopes that his movie could take the franchise back to its true form.
- Fede Álvarez explains why the young cast.
Directed by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus is an upcoming science fiction horror movie that serves as a standalone interquel set between 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens. The movie stars Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, David Jonsson, and more. It is reportedly the seventh installment in the Alien franchise.
The story follows a group of young space colonists who come face-to-face with one of the most terrifying life forms in space while scavenging a derelict space station. The movie is scheduled for release on August 16th, 2024, and ahead of the release, Fede Álvarez reveals how he tricked Ridley Scott into liking his script.
Fede Álvarez says Alien: Romulus is ‘taking franchise back to its true form’
Filmmaker Fede Álvarez recently spoke to Deadline at the San Diego Comic-Con 2024, where he described the upcoming movie Alien: Romulus as ‘a pretty intense ride’. He also added that the movie is 45 years of great science fiction horror ideas combined in two hours, plus more that he incorporated himself. He further commented,
I hope this movie takes the franchise back to its true form, in a way, to its original form—to be honest about what this truly is and what the first movie was. Half of the critics didn’t like it [Ridley Scott’s Alien]; the other half saw merit in it, and everybody agreed it was the most horrific, terrifying experience they had in theaters.
The filmmaker added that the experience is what made the franchise what it was and what it grew into, noting that the movie was truly something people had not seen before. Fede Álvarez shared that his mission was to simply take the franchise back to its horror roots and make sure that he could deliver it to the audience at that level. Of course, there is his element to it, as he explained that there are surprises in the movie for which he is excited for the audience to see.
In his interview with MTV, Fede Álvarez was asked about how he came up with the names of the characters in the movie, to which he explained,
Because I knew Ridley Scott was going to read. He was the first person to read. I tried to play this game where I try to plan something that I know he somehow emotionally is going to connect to without him even knowing. So Carradine is the name of the actor in his first movie, The Duelist.
Álvarez continued that he went to The Duelist and looked at the names of the cast members of the movie, revealing that Rain is also one of the names of the actors. He noted that he took them for his movie because he knew that Ridley Scott would feel good after reading.
Fede Álvarez addresses why the cast of Alien: Romulus is ‘young’
Even though Fede Álvarez wants his upcoming movie to take the Alien franchise back to its truest form, he wanted to make sure that his standalone interquel stands out and does its own thing. During an interview with Variety talking about the modern take on the movie, he said,
We kept a lot of perfect elements of those original movies untouched because we didn’t need to improve them, but then we had a lot of new stuff. That’s what makes it modern and new. Hopefully, it takes its place among the other ones, and for me, it’s never a bad time in theaters when you’re watching an ‘Alien’ movie.
The filmmaker went on to mention that he opted for a much younger cast compared to the ones in the previous installments because, for him, it was a way to imagine what the premise would be for a bunch of young people. Fede Álvarez explained that it allowed him to think about how a young adult would grow up in one of the colonies in the movie in a sci-fi world and, in the end, have to face one of the most terrifying creatures.
As a rule of thumb, in horror, the younger the people, the tougher it is to watch them die. Let’s agree on that. An 80-year-old man dies on-screen; you lived a good life, but if a 12-year-old kid dies in a movie, heartbreak.
Fede Álvarez also shared that he was excited when Ridley Scott told him that the movie was ‘f**king great,’ adding that he couldn’t have been more grateful that Scott let them do it. During the panel, he explained that one of the things he wanted to explore in the movie was human connections among the characters.
Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus comes out on August 16, 2024.
