James Cameron Tips His Hat to Alien: Earth

Back in 1979, Ridley Scott’s Alien crept onto screens with a slow-burn tension that felt more like a horror flick than your usual sci-fi adventure. Fast forward seven years, and James Cameron rolled in with a different plan: more action, more firepower. That’s how Aliens came to be. While it traded some of the original’s suspense for a bigger bang, punters didn’t seem to mind. The sequel pulled in a tidy sum and kicked off a sprawling franchise.

Since then, the Alien saga has seen seven main instalments, not counting those questionable Predator crossovers. The series has wandered all over the map, from David Fincher’s dark and moody debut to Fede Álvarez’s sharp reboot, and whatever Prometheus was trying to do. Not every turn has been to Cameron’s taste, but the franchise has never been short on surprises.

Alien: Earth Shakes Up the Franchise

Oddly enough, Cameron’s favourite chapter in the saga isn’t a film at all. In 2025, Disney+ dropped Alien: Earth, the first proper TV series in the Alien world. The show was a hit with critics and fans alike, and even Cameron himself gave it a nod in a chat with Dark Horizons.

“I think they took a lot of the DNA from my movie,”

he said.

“A couple of things from some of the later movies, they’ve got a little bit of that crazy POV thing racing down the corridors from Fincher‘s film. I think it’s good. It’s great creative recombinance in action, but with its own swerve, which is basically what I did. You gotta celebrate the new with the old.”

Noah Hawley, the bloke behind Fargo and Legion, steered Alien: Earth. The story is set two years before the original film, but in a different timeline. The usual suspects at Weyland-Yutani are up to their old tricks, gathering alien creatures from all over. Things go pear-shaped when a ship full of these specimens crashes on Earth, and—surprise, surprise—a Xenomorph gets loose and starts causing chaos. Who could’ve guessed?

Fresh Take, Familiar Thrills

While the premise might sound a bit cheeky, the show’s impact has been hard to ignore. Both critics and everyday viewers have raved about Hawley’s work, calling it not just the best Alien project in ages, but one of the top entries in the whole franchise. Some even compared it to Andor from the Star Wars universe, saying it used the familiar world to dig into deeper, more political stories.

Cameron pointed out that the series borrows from all corners of the Alien universe: the relentless threat from the original, the struggles of synthetics from Romulus, and the big ideas from Prometheus. There’s even room for a few classic shootouts, just like in Aliens. Alien: Earth is part of a growing trend where TV shows take what films started and run with it, often making things even better.

Looking Ahead

The series has already been picked up for another season, so it looks like Cameron will have something to watch in his downtime. With its mix of old-school nods and new twists, Alien: Earth has managed to win over even the toughest critics—and that’s no small feat.