MOVIE NEWS – “Do you want to see more footage?” Fede Alvarez asked midway through the Alien: Romulus panel at Comic-Con on Friday. “Yeahhhhhh!” the audience roared, a positive sign for 20th Century Studios and Disney regarding the reception of their millennial twist on the 45-year-old Ridley Scott franchise. Although it’s the latest installment in the Alien series, it’s the first one made after the Disney-Fox merger.

The audience in Hall H got an extended preview of the film featuring Cailee Spaeny and her team of astronauts navigating a red-lit alien lab-incubator. In a scene reminiscent of the trash compactor monster from Star Wars, baby aliens start emerging from the walls and into the water.

The second clip showed Aileen Wu’s character Laura having her chest burst open by a baby alien as a spaceship struggles to take off.

Adding a theatrical flair to the usual panel format, the event ended with blaring red sirens as alien facehuggers crawled onto the stage. In a piece of guerrilla theater, an actor foaming at the mouth stumbled onstage, culminating in an alien bursting out of his chest. Every attendee in Hall H received an alien facehugger mask, much to their delight.

Cailee Spaeny on being cast in #AlienRomulus and working with Fede Alvarez | #SDCC pic.twitter.com/LAnnUz16C5

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 27, 2024

This Alien film is set between Ridley Scott’s 1979 original and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, with Alvarez choosing this period for stylistic reasons.

“I wanted fresh faces, ones you wouldn’t associate with other characters,” said the director about his casting choices. David Jonsson plays a synthetic, or robot, character in the film; a being similar to Michael Fassbender’s characters in Ridley Scott’s prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

“Nothing in the first movie tells you that Sigourney (Weaver) was going to survive; anyone can die,” the director added. “That concept is still present here. There’s a lot of death in this movie,” said the Don’t Breathe actor.

Ridley Scott asks Fede Alvarez a question on the different themes he explores in #AlienRomulus | #SDCC pic.twitter.com/6mHdcrXM1c

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 27, 2024

Spaeny shared that she auditioned for Alvarez for another film and left the audition crying. “I think he remembered that,” the actress said about getting the call for the new Alien movie.

The director shot the movie chronologically.

“It’s a challenge to make another movie in that world,” Alvarez said.

Scott, a producer on the sequel, joined via video and asked Alvarez what new themes would be in the film. “It’s called Romulus because it’s a story of siblinghood. One thing I wanted to explore that wasn’t seen in the original movies is the deep human connections among the characters. This is the first time we have really close people who truly love each other, so when things like this happen, it makes it much more dramatic – being someone’s sibling – would you die for your brother or sister, or leave them behind?”

But also “the psychosexual,” according to the filmmaker from the original film.

Alien: Romulus opens on August 16.

Source: Deadline