How the ‘Alien: Earth’ Creator Invented New Monsters

The iconic and hideous Xenomorph has ripped, clawed, and munched its way through many helpless victims since first appearing in 1979’s “Alien.”

So Noah Hawley, the creator and writer of the upcoming TV show “Alien: Earth,” knew he had to conjure up some new monsters to match the horror of watching “Alien” for the first time, he told Business Insider in London. They include a strange eyeball with tentacles, which appears in one of the trailers.

“I had to bring back the feeling of discovery of the lifecycle of a creature that every time you thought it had gotten as brutal and awful as it could get, it got worse. And I couldn’t do that with a Xenomorph anymore,” Hawley said.

He approached the challenge of designing new creatures like a game.

“You think about, well, what are the things that upset me the most? The bodily autonomy, parasites, all of it. And then you’re doing an almost comedic game of what’s the worst thing that could happen?” he said.

“If they do enough disturbing things, then they become visually iconic, versus trying to make something that looks cool and then adding that in,” he added.

Hawley was also mindful of making sure the plentiful violence in the eight-episode series didn’t become meaningless.

Referring to the iconic chestburster scene in Alien, which director Ridley Scott famously didn’t warn the cast how gory it would be, Hawley said: “I didn’t work at a method level like that for the cast, but what I know at the heart of it is these deaths have to mean something.

“And what makes them awful is not just the graphic nature of them, it’s who they’re happening to and the feelings that go around it.”

Good things come to those who wait, and for Hawley, horror is no different: “I feel like that horror is all about anticipation. So if there’s too much delivery and not enough anticipation, then you’ve got the balance wrong.”

“Alien: Earth” starts streaming on Hulu on August 12 in the US and on August 13 on Disney+ in the UK.