Welcome to a bonus episode of the Evolution of Horror. It's Mike Munzer here, your host. And guys,

the xenomorph is back. It's only been a year since we got Alien Romulus, the last installment

in the alien universe. But today sees the release of an alien television show, an eight-part

TV series streaming on Disney Plus called Alien Earth. Now, this show

isn't in any way related to Alien Romulus last year. In fact, it's actually set even before the

events of the first Alien movie. Now, it's not a prequel like Prometheus or Alien Covenant.

It's its own self-contained story. And it's going to be

running weekly on Disney Plus over the next few weeks. There are eight episodes altogether.

Now, I got the chance to sit down and chat to the showrunner, Noah Hawley, and the exec producer, David W.

Zucker. Noah Hawley, some of you might be aware of his other work. He was the showrunner for the Fargo

TV series. He also show ran the Legion TV series for FX. So I sat down and chatted to him a little bit

about bringing the xenomorph to the small screen and what that meant. This is a relatively spoiler-free

interview. We do talk about a few elements of the plot that are set up in the first two episodes. I'd only seen the first two episodes when I interviewed them, so nothing major is spoiled beyond that point. Please enjoy my conversation with David W. Zucker and Noah Hawley.

First of all, just set the scene for us.

Tell us where in the kind of alien universe,

where in the timeline we're at for this particular show.

We start a couple of years before they wake up

on the Nostromo before Ridley's film.

So we're contemporaneous with the original film, and depending on how long the show runs,

you know, we might head toward the second film.

But there's a lot of negative space in the Alien franchise because they're asleep for the majority of the years that go by as they move through the universe.

So, yeah, we just placed it there. I think it's a good access point for an audience.

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