alien

Well-received big-budget Alien Earth TV series gets a second season

Alien Earth will return to FX (and Disney+ and Hulu) for a second season, thanks to a new deal between Disney and series creator Noah Hawley.

The new season has no air date yet, but we do know one thing about it: It will be shot in London. The first season was shot in Thailand, and most of the story took place in Southeast Asia, so the change in shooting location suggests a new setting for much of the next season. Production on season two will reportedly begin next year.

For those who watched season one to its conclusion, season two probably seemed like a sure thing; the finale resolved many of the core conflicts of that first batch of episodes, but also was clearly intended to be the launching point for a new storyline in season two.

That finale viewer’s instinct is probably right—there was likely to be a season two, but the real question was whether Hawley would return as its creative lead. That was contingent on dealmaking between Hawley, FX, and Disney Entertainment Television. That deal has been made, reportedly to the tune of nine figures.

Alien: Isolation sequel bursts into existence, 10 years after original

alien, alien isolation, gaming, Sega / Paul Patrick / October 7, 2024

The Alien franchise is about uncaring monsters, unfeeling corporations, and horrific, claustrophobic terror. Given this setting, it almost made sense, what happened to the original Alien: Isolation.

The game was released to positive reviews, is now considered one of the best games ever made, and sold more than 2 million copies within its first few months. Despite this, Isolation only got “close to break-even or just about in the black,” then-Creative Assembly studio director Tim Heaton told GamesIndustry.biz a year after release. With the rapid evolution of AAA game development, that wasn’t enough. And so, like a salvage team diverted to a bio-weapon recovery mission, Isolation and its momentum were seemingly abandoned.

Gameplay and review accolades for Alien: Isolation, released 10 years ago today.

Abandoned, that is, until today, the 10th anniversary of that game’s 2014 release. The appropriately named Al Hope, creative director of Isolation studio Creative Assembly, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that his team had “heard your distress calls loud and clear,” and could confirm that “a sequel to Alien: Isolation is in early development.”

The original game stands out to this day for its bold yet entirely appropriate take on making an Alien game. You play as Amanda Ripley, daughter of iconic heroine Ellen Ripley, working for Weyland-Yutani in a welding job. You get a chance to find out more about what happened to your mother, but—you’ll never believe it—things go terribly wrong, and now you are hunted.

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