Here’s How Much Xenomorph Action to Expect in ‘Alien: Earth,’ According to Director

The Alien franchise is about to get much bigger, and scarier, with the release of Alien: Earth. This new sci-fi horror series, created by Noah Hawley, takes place two years before Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien movie.

Set to premiere on August 12, 2025, on FX and Hulu, the show promises to bring back the terror of the Xenomorphs while adding new twists.

The story of Alien: Earth begins when a spaceship crashes on Earth. A young woman, played by Sydney Chandler, teams up with a group of soldiers to face what’s described as the biggest threat to the planet. The show also stars Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, and Adarsh Gourav.

According to Hawley, he wanted the new series to feel like the classic Alien films. He told reporters during a set visit, “In the design phase with Wētā, I didn’t want to mess with the silhouette of the creature at all.” Keeping the Xenomorph design classic was a top priority, but Hawley admitted they did make some small changes.

He said, “I always felt like it was the least effective when it looked like a guy in a suit. So there are elements, like in the classic, there’s just this big ribcage, which feels very human to me, so I wanted to try to minimize that and play around with some other ideas.”

One of the bigger changes is the color of the Xenomorphs. Hawley explained that instead of keeping them completely black, he wanted to make them look more like bugs, saying, “I wanted to play into more of the bug-like quality of it, so maybe it falls a little more in the roach coloration.”

Director and executive producer Dana Gonzales added more details about how the Xenomorphs will look and move in the show. He said, “I think we designed something that is very photographable and scary and detailed… we can kind of fly the Xeno around and stuff like that. So it’s not so much just coming out and scaring you and having that kind of jump scare. It’s literally flying through the air. It’s chasing.” According to Gonzales, the Xenomorphs in Alien: Earth are all real, not computer generated.

He said, “We don’t have any CG Xenomorph. It’s 100% real.” He also said that the Facehuggers are real too, built by the team at Wētā. “I don’t know how many we have, but we have many Facehuggers that do different things,” he said.

The big question fans have is how much Xenomorph action we’re actually going to get. Gonzales had a clear answer. “We’re seeing more Xenomorph than any of these movies,” he said. He explained that older Alien films only showed quick flashes of the creatures, often just a few seconds at a time. But in Alien: Earth, fans will get to see the Xenomorphs in full, in large-scale action scenes. He revealed, “We have huge sequences where all you’re seeing is the Xenomorph. It’s driving a lot of things.”

He also gave a hint about the first few episodes of the show. According to Gonzales, the first episode introduces a major event and sets up the main characters. But it’s episodes two and three where things really get big. “Two used to be super massive. Now 2 and 3 are both massive,” he said. “There’s a lot of Xenomorph activity going on wall-to-wall.” He added, “One, 2 and 3 together are going to be unbelievable.”

Besides the regular Xenomorphs and Facehuggers, Hawley hinted that the show would go even further. He wants to bring back the mystery and horror that made the original films famous. He said, “I am trying to re-mystify Alien. So much of what made that first movie and the second movie so horrifying was that every time you thought you knew what the lifecycle of this creature was, it just got worse.”

Hawley explained that the original films kept surprising the audience with new, terrifying stages of the alien creatures, and he’s trying to do the same with this series. “I’ve tried to come up with ways that the show returns that sense of, ‘What’s going to happen next? That’s so gross!’”

Fans will get to see everything. new designs, real-life creatures, more Xenomorph action than ever, and some surprises too, when Alien: Earth premieres on August 12, 2025.

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