Ellen Ripley will not appear in Alien TV series, producer reveals

Disney and FX/Hulu announced the start of filming of the first Alien Universe TV series at the end of last year. The series is currently being directed by Noah Hawley (representative works "Legion" and "Fargo").

In an interview with Vanity Fair this week, Hawley revealed more details about the show.

Hawley: "Right now for me, it's taking the IP from the fantastic Alien movies by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher and making an Alien TV series for FX. The Alien movies they've made are great monster movies, but they're not just monster movies. They're movies about humanity being trapped between a primitive parasitic past and an artificially intelligent future. The humans in these movies can't go forward, and they can't go back. So I think those are very interesting movies."

In the interview, Hawley affirmed Ellen Ripley's position in the Alien movie: "She is one of the greatest characters ever. I think Ripley's story has been told perfectly, so I don't want to mess up these masterpieces. The Alien movie story always starts from being trapped in a prison or in a spaceship. I think it would be more interesting to expand the scene a little bit so that the audience can't predict where the plot will go next."

Hawley also noted in the interview: "In a way, this is also a story about inequality. In this TV series, you see the people who have to do the dirty work. So you see what happens when inequality is not well addressed." This seems to be referring to the employees of Weyland-Yutani.