It’s clear that Ridley Scott doesn’t really trust anyone to take the reigns of the Alien series away from him anymore, and Ridley Scott himself can’t really be trusted to make new Alien movies anymore after Prometheus and Covenant failed to take over the world like a murderous plague of extraterrestrial monsters, so 20th Century Fox has decided to celebrate the Alien series’ 40th anniversary by cutting out theatrical movies entirely. As explained by The Hollywood Reporter, the studio worked with a platform called Tongal that connects “brands, studios, and networks with online filmmakers to crowdsource new content” in order to find filmmakers who wanted to create a series of short films that will tell stories within the Alien universe without having to muck up the main timeline further.
Out of 550 submissions, six were chosen to become real shorts, and a new one will premiere every week on IGN starting on March 29 (they’ll eventually be shared on the Alien Universe website along with new behind-the-scenes content starting in May). Here’s a teaser for the series, with descriptions of the six shorts below that.
Alien: Alone was written and directed by Noah Miller, and it’s about the last surviving crew member on a derelict ship trying to find a way to survive. (There’s probably a Xenomorph chasing her.)
Alien: Containment comes from Chris Reading, and it’s about four people stuck in an escape pod in deep space trying to figure out if any of them have been “infected” by the mysterious “outbreak” that destroyed their ship. (It’s Xenomorphs.)
Alien: Harvest was directed by Benjamin Howdeshell, and it sounds like it’s based all around the classic motion sensor hook, with a ship’s crew trying to reach an escape shuttle “while a creature in the shadows terrorizes” them. (What could it be?)
Alien: Night Shift was written and directed by Aidan Breznick, and it’s about a seemingly drunk “space trucker” who gets brought in to a supply depot for a nightcap by his co-worker, only for his “condition” to get worse. (Again, he’s Xenomorphed.)
Alien: Ore, from the Spear Sisters, is about a miner who finds one of her colleagues dead under mysterious circumstances, leaving her to decide whether she should follow orders and escape or stick around to fight whatever is attacking the mine. (Fighting the Xenomorph rarely works, but we’ll see.)
Alien: Specimen from Kelsey Taylor actually breaks from the convention we established here, since it sounds like it concerns a Face Hugger on the loose in a space greenhouse instead of a full-blown Xenomorph. (Makes us look like dummies.)