In 1979, along with Ellen Ripley and the other passengers of the Nostromo, viewers set off into deep space to meet the deadly Xenomorph. More than 30 years after the release of Ridley Scott’s Alien, FX will bring the predatory creature – and the audience – back to home turf. The series, a prequel to the famous movie, is set on Earth, and it’s called… Alien: Earth.
While the title may be less than exciting (compared to titles like Alien Resurrection or Prometheus), and some recent franchise instalments haven’t been great, the project looks quite promising.
Noah Hawley, best known as the creator of the Fargo and Legion TV shows, is creator, showrunner and director. Ridley Scott, who directed the first Alien movie in 1979, is attached to the series as an executive producer. However, this isn’t the only project from the Alien universe with Scott’s involvement – his latest film in the series, Alien: Romulus, hit theatres in August 2024.
Alien: Earth (alongside Alien: Romulus) is designed to expand the universe and attract a new generation of viewers. It’s planned as a multi-season story with a definitive ending, which is a good sign, given how many shows end up dragged out and disappointing.
Here’s what we know about the Alien TV series so far.
When will Alien: Earth be released?
According to FX, Alien: Earth will debut on Hulu and Disney+ on Tuesday, 12 August 2025 at 8pm PT/ET. The series contains eight episodes, with the first two dropping on the premiere date and the rest following in weekly instalments.
UK viewers can stream the first two episodes on Disney+ on Wednesday, 13 August 2025.
The show was announced in 2020. However, it took quite a lot of time to move forward with production. Filming for the show began in Thailand on 19 April 2024, and it wrapped in July 2024.
When will Alien: Earth take place?
The initial reports on the series suggested that its action would take place even before Prometheus. Later, it was rumoured that Alien: Earth is set in the year 2120, two years before the events of the first-released movie of the franchise: Alien.
Finally, Noah Hawley, the showrunner, explained that the series takes place around James Cameron’s Aliens, the second film created in the Xenomorph franchise (via Collider):
I think we exist somewhere around Aliens, around the James Cameron story. I haven’t had to get crazy specific with it, but the events of the first film are referenced in the show at some point. So, I think it’s somewhere around the events of the second film, either before or just after.
This means that Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and Alien depict events that occur before the show. However, it’s still unclear whether the series covers events before or after Alien: Romulus.
What will the plot of Alien: Earth be?
We won’t encounter the chest-bursting Xenomorph in deep space this time – as the title reveals, the series will be set on Earth.
Here’s the official synopsis for the show:
When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley
The plot will focus on the infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a corrupt conglomerate engaged in various ventures, including manufacturing androids and starships and organising space colonisation missions.
The company was also profoundly engaged in the search for extraterrestrial life forms. At one point, Weyland-Yutani deciphered a message sent from the Acheron moon, which appeared to be a warning about dangerous species. In Alien, the corporation sent the oblivious crew of the Nostromo spacecraft to investigate the case, hoping to use the Xenomorph as a bioweapon.
The Alien TV series will show the corporation’s beginnings as it struggles to beat its rivals in the race to create android life. How it will be connected to the Xenomorph is so far unknown.
In 2022, speaking to Esquire, Noah Hawley revealed his take on the series:
It’s set on Earth of the future. At this moment, I describe that as Edison versus Westinghouse versus Tesla. Someone’s going to monopolize electricity. We just don’t know which one it is.
In the movies, we have this Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which is clearly also developing artificial intelligence – but what if there are other companies trying to look at immortality in a different way, with cyborg enhancements or transhuman downloads? Which of those technologies is going to win? It’s ultimately a classic science fiction question: does humanity deserve to survive?
John Landgraf, FX CEO, recently said to Deadline, that the show will serve as a “big imaginative reimagining” of the Alien franchise, similar to Hawley’s work with the Fargo series.
Noah has an incredible ability to both find a way of being faithful and showing fidelity to an original creation, like to the Coen brothers or to Ridley Scott’s movie and James Cameron’s follow-up Aliens, but also to bring something new that represents both an extension and reinvention of a franchise at the same time. He’s done a masterful job with Alien as he did with Fargo. There are some big surprises in store for the audience.
(…) Setting it on Earth is really interesting. We have to think forward about the future of the planet in terms of the environment, governance, technology and create and design a version of the planet in the future … Noah wants to do that in a distinctive and original way.
Ellen Ripley, as well as the other characters from other instalments of the franchise, won’t be a part of the series.
Is there a trailer for Alien: Earth?
Here’s the full trailer for the series, unveiling the horrors waiting for humankind:
FX also released a few teasers announcing the Xenomorph coming to Earth.
Another teaser narrowed the series’ release window:
If you want to witness the birth of the Xenomorph, take a look at this clip:
Who is in the cast of Alien: Earth?
In the series, most of the characters are hybrids of humans and androids. As part of the Phoenix Program, the minds of severely ill children were transplanted into synthetic bodies, creating a new species.
Sydney Chandler, who you may know from Don’t Worry Darling, Pistol, and Sugar, will portray the show’s protagonist, Wendy. According to the showrunner Noah Hawley, she is “a meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult.” She’s sent to the frontline to battle the Xenomorph.
Other hybrids include:
- Kit Young – Tootles, who got his name from Peter Pan
- Adarsh Gourav – Slightly, a boy who views Wendy as an older sister
- Lily Newmark – Nibs, the youngest of all hybrids. She feels lost in the whole situation
- Jonathan Ayaji – Smee, a hybrid with positive, slightly naive approach to the world
- Erana James – Curly, who back in the days, she was a child with a short life expectancy. Thanks to the Phoenix Program, she got a chance to live forever
Here is a list of other actors and actresses that will star in the show:
- Timothy Olyphant – Kirsh, a synthetic, and Wendy’s mentor
- Alex Lawther – CJ, aka, Hermit, Wendy’s brother, who, contrary to her, grew up in a human body.
- Samuel Blenkin – Boy Kavalier, a kid genius, and the powerful CEO of the Prodigy Corporation
- Adrian Edmondson – Atom Eins, Boy Kavalier’s trusted man
- Essie Davis – Dame Silvia, a brilliant geneticist employed at the Prodigy Corporation
- David Rysdahl – Arthur Sylvia, a human worker at the Prodigy Corporation, Dame Sylvia’s husband
- Diêm Camille – Siberian, a human and a tactical soldier committed to following orders
- Babou Ceesay – Morrow, a Yutani’s cyborg
- Moe Bar-El – Rashidi, the leader of a search and rescue mission
- Sandra Yi Sencindiver – portray Yutani, a senior member of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation
On the series’ official Instagram account, you can see the first photos showing the main characters of Alien: Earth.
