‘Alien: Romulus’: Everything You Need To Know For The Next Facehugging Nightmare (Update For June 2024)

Fede Álvarez, director of Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead, knows how to work a claustrophobic atmosphere. That’s only a single quality out of many why he was the guy to handle adding a movie to the existing Alien franchise. Of course, he is wise enough to never definitively choose whether the 1979 Ridley Scott movie or the 1986 James Cameron sequel, Aliens, is the better movie. That’s like choosing between the first two The Godfather films, you know? And considering that most sequels don’t come close to the original, it’s a handy dilemma to have.

Álvarez’s upcoming Alien: Romulus is an interquel that takes place in between Scott and Cameron’s contributions, so let’s talk about what we can expect from this facehugging good time.

Plot

This film’s events take place in between Alien (2090-ish) and Aliens (the year 2179), so expect an older (relatively speaking), familiar look to the ship and its technology, and of course, everything here happens as though Prometheus never happened. Álvarez also found inspiration for this show’s characters — a group of young-adult scavengers — after watching Aliens‘ extended cut and wondering what happened colony children grew up and left their homes. These characters, like the crew in Alien, will be blue collar, and the show’s simple description is as follows: “Young people on a distant world find themselves confronting the most terrifying life-form in the universe.”

Are Ridley Scott and James Cameron involved in any way? Scott is producing, and Cameron did some hefty consulting to help map out the ship’s details for this film. In other words, the film’s scavengers will find out the horror of old-school filmmaking in the best way (for the audience).

Additionally, another current Alien project exists, and that would be FX and Noah Hawley’s series (starring Timothy Olyphant) that has been filming in Thailand. The events of that particular take on Xenomorphs revolve around what happens when they crash land on Earth and have the run of an open environment.

Whereas Alien: Romulus is all about being in space, where as the original film’s tagline declared, “No one can hear you scream.” The effects will be mainly practical, including these face huggers, on a ship where there’s no escape from the critters:

The film will also be theatrically released after originally being planned for a Hulu streaming event. And it’s a damn good thing because this is definitely a poster for a movie that should be watched in a theater:

Cast

Xenomorphs and Facehuggers are always the chief attraction with these films, and we can likely expect a synthetic among the scavenger crew. The very human cast, however, includes Cailee Spaeny along with Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, Archie Renaux, David Johnson, and Spike Feam.

Release Date

On August 16, everyone can be heard screaming if they head to the multiplex.

Trailer

Fans of Aliens should especially enjoy the water scene in this trailer, and multiple nods to Reply include a face off with Cailee Spaeny and a Xenomorph.

Previously, a teaser trailer did the job in a chillingly effective yet sparse way.