New Fede Álvarez ‘Alien’ movie bound for Hulu with Ridley Scott producing

Alien is returning for a fresh new tear across the screen. Franchise creator and original Alien director Ridley Scott reportedly is taking the producing reins of a newly-announced film set in the iconic sci-fi horror-verse he first unleashed back in 1979, with Fede Álvarez — a man who knows a thing or two about horror himself — set to direct.

Via The Hollywood Reporter, the yet-untitled new Alien project will be filmed as an exclusive movie for Hulu, with only very slight details to frame its specific place in the wider Alien universe. There’s no early word on the movie’s casting or story, but “sources describe it as unconnected to the previous movies,” THR reports.

Whatever the story is, it must be intriguing enough to get Scott (via his Scott Free production banner) and Disney’s 20th Century Studios on board just from a rough outline of the pitch. Álvarez — “a rabid fan of the franchise” according to THR’s sources — reportedly came up with the idea for the new Alien treatment and offered Scott his take on the franchise “many years ago,” with Scott recently calling the director “out of the blue” to see if Álvarez was still interested in moving forward.

“It was just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before,” 20th Century’s Steve Asbell told THR, after noting that the studio bit on Álvarez’s Alien idea “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch.” Asbell also said setting the movie at Hulu will allow it to tap more closely into the spirit of Scott’s original 1979 film than recent Alien installments: “It’s not a film that has to be all things to all people with those gargantuan budgets,” he explained. “They get to be authentically what they are. And this is closer to its genre roots.”

Scott’s original Alien lifted Sigourney Weaver to eternal sci-fi stardom as Ripley, the tough-as-nails officer who faces off against the twisted Xenomorph species aboard a distressed space vessel. Later installments, including the Scott-directed Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) evolved the franchise to unveil surprising links between the terrifying extra-planetary creatures and the mythic, mysterious origins of human life on Earth.

Álvarez is no stranger to horror, having directed the Sam Raimi-produced 2013 soft reboot of the Evil Dead film franchise as well as the 2016 horror-thriller Don’t Breathe. He also served as a writer for last year’s Don’t Breathe sequel, as well as this year’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a direct sequel to the 1974 slasher classic. There’s no early word on when Álvarez’s new Alien movie will land at Hulu — but we’re space-screaming all the same at the idea of a new, Scott-produced movie in one of sci-fi’s all-time scariest franchises.