In the run-up to the release of this year’s The End of Oak Street, there were rumors that the movie could be connected to the Cloverfield franchise. It was, after all, produced by J.J. Abrams. Additionally, the premise seemed primed for an installment of the anthology series, which had been dormant for several years. Eventually, it turned out that The End of Oak Street, Cloverfieldian as it may have been, was its own thing. Something similar happened around a decade ago, during the heyday of the superhero genre, when a mysterious sci-fi movie distributed by Sony was believed to be a secret Spider-Man spin-off centered on the character Venom. The movie in question is now headed to free streaming, where audiences can appreciate it for what it really is — an underrated thrill-ride in the vein of Ridley Scott‘s Alien.
The movie in question was released in 2017, the same year as Scott’s Alien: Covenant. However, it was rumored to be a lead-in for Sony’s upcoming Venom film starring Tom Hardy, which was slated for release in 2018. The movie starred a stellar ensemble featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, and others. It was directed by Daniel Espinosa, who had previously worked with Reynolds on the action thriller Safe House, and would go on to make the ill-fated superhero filmMorbius, starring Jared Leto. Part of the reason it was mistaken for a Venom movie was because Espinosa had directed Hardy previously, in a movie titled Child 44.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
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Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
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🔥Max Rockatansky
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01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
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02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
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03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
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04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
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05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
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06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
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07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
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08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
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Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
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Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
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USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
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The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
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The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
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The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
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Here’s When You Can Watch the Star-Studded ‘Alien’ Clone for Free
However, Espinosa’s 2017 sci-fi film had nothing to do with Venom after all. We’re talking, of course, about Life. Produced on a reported budget of $58 million, the movie grossed $100 million at the global box office. It now holds a 67% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Life is just thrilling, well-acted, and capably filmed enough to overcome an overall inability to add new wrinkles to the trapped-in-space genre.” The movie will be added to the Tubi library this October. Interestingly, before Sony took it on, the movie was set up at Paramount, the home of the Cloverfield series. Fans of the franchise will know that Paramount made its own Alien-inspired Cloverfield installment, The Cloverfield Paradox, which was then offloaded to Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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