Entertainment
‘Alien 3’ Director Reveals Scrapped Plans That Would Have Changed the Franchise Forever [Exclusive]
Some alternate-universe movies are just too tantalizing not to imagine what could’ve been, and Renny Harlin’s Alien 3 is one of the most fascinating films that never happened. Harlin’s version would have taken the xenomorphs to Earth or all the way back to their home planet, something the franchise has still not done, over 30 years later. The Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger director was once lined up to follow Ridley Scott and James Cameron on the franchise, but he ultimately left the project after deciding Fox’s approach was not the film he wanted to make.
Speaking during his masterclass panel at the Mediterrane Film Festival, moderated by Collider Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub, Harlin recalled the surreal moment he first realized he had landed one of Hollywood’s biggest directing jobs. The Finnish filmmaker had recently broken through with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, but he knew taking on Alien 3 would mean following two all-time genre heavyweights.
“I was offered quite a few movies after Nightmare on Elm Street, and Alien 3 became the most interesting of them. Of course, I admired Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, and I was thinking, ‘Here’s Renny Harlin, 28 years old, from Finland, and I’m going to follow in the footsteps of these guys?’ So, I made a deal to do the movie for 20th Century Fox. I drove my little rental car through the studio gates, and they had a pass for me. I said, ‘I’m Renny Harlin.’ They said, ‘Welcome, Mr. Harlin. Your office is this way.’ And still, today, it brings tears to my eyes because it was an unreal moment. I thought this was absolutely going to change my life.”
Renny Harlin Wanted ‘Alien 3’ on Earth — or the Xenomorph Homeworld
Harlin said the studio’s version of the sequel was going to focus on a prison ship overrun by aliens, an idea that would ultimately become the foundation of David Fincher’s film, but Harlin didn’t see the appeal of that premise, especially after the scale and invention of the first two movies.
“However, the movie that the studio wanted to make was not at all the movie that I thought we should make. They basically said, ‘We want to make a movie where we are on a prison ship, the aliens come to the prison ship, and the prisoners fight the aliens.’ And I said, ‘Why would anybody care about prisoners on a prison ship in space? What’s unique about that?’”
Instead, Harlin had two very different ideas. The first would have brought the xenomorphs to Earth, including a visual that sounds like it could have made for one hell of a teaser poster. “I had two ideas,” explained Harlin. “One idea was that the third one would be about the aliens coming to Earth. Already, I’d drawn them a poster of a cornfield where aliens are marching through the cornfield towards a white farmhouse, and the studio said, ‘Nobody’s going to believe in aliens on Earth.’ This was a little before Jurassic Park and movies like that. Then my other idea was, ‘Let’s go to where the aliens are from. Let’s find the planet where they are from and find out what they are. Are they bad guys? Are they good guys? Are they just oblivious organisms trying to protect themselves?’ They were like, ‘Nobody wants to go where the aliens are from. People want to see a prison ship.’”
Harlin remained at Fox for almost a year, but eventually reached the point where he felt he had to leave rather than direct a movie he could not stand behind. “So, I worked for almost a year on the Fox lot, and then one day… I get asked about directing, and I must say that I think that the most important thing is that you have to be honest with yourself. Have I always succeeded in that? No. But when I’m being honest with myself, that’s when I’ve had the greatest success in my life. There was a day when I decided, ‘I’m going to quit. I have nothing. I have no income, I have no future. I have no other opportunities,’ and I thought, ‘No studio will ever hire me again.’ But I went to the heads of 20th Century Fox, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe in this film. I’m gonna die of embarrassment if I make this movie after what Ridley Scott and James Cameron did.’ And I left.”
Walking Away Led Renny Harlin Straight to ‘Die Hard 2’
Rather than ending his Hollywood career, Harlin’s decision led to an even bigger opportunity at the same studio. Fox offered him a new project the next day, and he went on to direct Die Hard 2, cementing himself as one of the most exciting action filmmakers of the era. “I thought that was it. I might as well buy a ticket back to Finland,” said Harlin. “The next day, 20th Century Fox offered me a new movie, and then I did Die Hard 2 with them, and the rest was history. But it was just because I had the guts to be honest with myself and other people and say, ‘This is not for me. I don’t know how to do it this way. It doesn’t feel right.’ And I think that’s a very, very important thing. It’s easy to kind of go with the mainstream and go with what seems popular and all that, but I think that the only real way is to be honest with yourself about what you do.”
Renny Harlin was speaking at the Mediterrane Film Festival in Valletta, Malta. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
- Release Date
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May 22, 1992
- Runtime
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114 minutes
- Writers
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David Giler, Larry Ferguson, Walter Hill, Vincent Ward, Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett
- Producers
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Ezra Swerdlow
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