Noah Hawley stewed on an Alien spinoff years before FX even secured the rights. Now, “Alien: Earth” jumps to the small screen with all the eerie essentials of the Ridley Scott sci-fi classic: dread-soaked atmospheres, spine-tingling suspense, and, of course, those horrifying acid-blooded freaks. But this time, the Emmy-winning creator carved out a bold new nightmare that exists in parallel rather than a continuation of the film franchise. For production designer Andy Nicholson, it meant diving headfirst into the archives to craft fresh, striking motifs that didn’t just nod to the past but expanded the iconic universe. The goal? To make it feel unmistakably Alien with a few surprises lurking in the shadows – all this while shooting in Thailand.
“Noah is a very experienced showrunner and has a great mind to kick ideas around with, which for someone like me is very refreshing,” Nicholson told IndieWire, who teamed with designer Jason Knox-Johnston to create the eight-episode haunt. His first question to Hawley was where, in the canon, visually and texturally, did the story take place? “What we both really liked was the vision of the future that the makers of ‘Alien’ had in 1979,” the production designer said. “That gave me a lot to play with because there were three principal jobs in this show. The Maginot, Prodigy City, and Neverland.”
For the story, chaos erupts after the USCSS Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani research ship, crash-lands in Prodigy City on Neverland, a research island founded by Prodigy Corp’s Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). The two clash over the ship’s not-so-friendly cargo. Team Wey-Yu is led by a terminator-like cyborg, Morrow (Babou Ceesay), while Team Kavalier features a group of hybrids (synthetics with human consciousness) led by the insatiably curious Wendy (Sydney Chandler).
With Maginot, Nicholson took note of the Wey-Yu-owned USCSS Nostromo, which first appeared in the original film and then later in “Alien: Romulus” as wreckage. “That ship remains a benchmark as a spaceship interior, and I believe at the time, elevated the art form of production design in terms of what it brought to it,” he said. “Noah and I talked about what we really liked on the inside of Nostromo that would be good for Maginot.”
Nicholson studied the iconic ship frame by frame as few blueprints existed, working out set size and what details he should recreate and which to magnify. The result has Maginot boasting dark, industrial interiors and a peppering of futuristic flavor. Its utilitarian bridge hums with flickering monitors, exposed wires, and analog tech – tactile consoles fill the space. The most alluring: an escape room decked out with hundreds of small yellow lights and old-school monitors, a beacon of hope for those who can make it inside.
“There’s a lovely period of European car interior and furniture design from the late ‘70s and ‘80s, which you can feel in ‘Alien’ and a little bit less in ‘Aliens.’ We were inspired by that but expanded it to include Noah’s ideas about the future look,” Nicholson said. Maginot’s exterior took on a new shape, inspired by the USS Sulaco from “Alien” with engine details nodding to the Nostromo as Easter eggs for fans.
Creating the aftermath of Maginot’s wreckage in Prodigy City was another feat. “Because of the schedule, we had to build crashed versions of some of the interiors first. Usually, you don’t do this because it’s inefficient, but because we were shooting the scripts in episode order, we had to build damaged versions of the bridge, cyro chamber, and parts of a corridor,” Nicholson said.
It meant the team had to construct sets that could be easily swapped. For instance, the cryo chamber was designed with a collapsible ceiling. And one of the smashed corridors was made out of sections so it could be raised high in the air to mimic the same angle of the crashed aircraft. While most interior work, damaged or not, was constructed on soundstages, a sequence where Prodigy soldiers enter the ship through a hole in its hull was created on location.
“That scene was all practically shot in Bangkok,” Nicholson said. “We found an empty shopping mall completely derelict. In the middle of it was a five-story atrium, so we built a 40-foot by 30-foot section of the Maginot on an angle and the outside of the hull on the shopping mall. Then we bridged the gap with a twisted beam. So that whole first entry into the ship had very minimal set extension, only to give it a bit of depth for low and high shots.”
Prodigy City and Neverland was inspired by Thailand’s lush environment and architecture. “With an episodic, the audience needs to know on a very basic level exactly where they are when you jump from one scene to another. You need to know you’re in different parts of Neverland and that it’s different from the Maginot,” Nicholson explained. “So when I started to think about what Neverland should look like, the amount of concrete that was in Bangkok made it an interesting city. There’s some lovely brutalist architecture which is quite remarkable, thinking this could be a good look for some of Neverland.”
The main street of Prodigy City was found near their production offices, distinguishing itself by its abandoned stores and natural patina. Adding to the look was the work of graphic designer Neville Brody. “He did a lot of seminal pieces of the 1980s. It’s that lovely period in graphic design when everything was mainly letter set and wasn’t just done on a computer. I looked at his style and used that for a lot of the street signs and shop signs. It just felt like it worked for the location,” Nicholson said.
For Prodigy Corporation, Nicholson sought a building that had scale that didn’t rely on being a massive visual effects backdrop. “If you notice shots of Prodigy airships landing, there are elements that poke out from the jungle,” Nicholson said. “The idea of that is when you’re shooting on the ground, you can put a very recognizable silhouette in the background that lets you know we’re somewhere outside Neverland without having to see the big buildings.”
Interiors were designed to be multifunctional, while others, like the main lab, stood alone. Large air vents hinted at Prodigy Corp’s lax security, perfect for lurking aliens. Even Boy Cavalier’s sleek office wasn’t spared. “Not having rooms that were safe for anybody to be in helps amplify the threat,” Nicholson said. “So we made corridors you can never quite see around the corner, and all the windows are frosted so you don’t quite know what’s waiting on the other side.”
The lab holding the alien life hostage was designed with a muted color palette and tone. “We wanted the people and the creatures to stand out from the background,” Nicholson said. “There’s a fiberglass finish with vinyl flooring in the corridors, so nothing was popping too much.”
Opposite, Wey-Yu Corp makes only a brief appearance in the series. One such instance is a sequence involving a phone call that was shot at Bangkok’s Park Origin Thonglor Complex, which sustained substantial damage following a massive earthquake in March 2025. (Filming began in July 2023 with a touch over 120 shooting days, including areas of Phuket, Phang Nga, Surat Thani, Krabi, and the soundstage at The Studio Park in Samut Prakan.)
Transforming imagination into immersive nightmare fuel allowed the Thai set dressing team to flex their expertise. “They were able to bring back things that were so perfect that you wouldn’t be able to find in the UK or America. Stuff you need to recreate the things used to such great effect by Michael Seymour and Roger Christian on the original film,” Nicholson said. “We weren’t trying to copy what they were doing, but be inspired by that, and they should get credit for that.”
The entire “Alien: Earth” production team should get credit, too, for expanding on Seymour’s and Christian’s work in the original, hopefully in a way that they — if not exactly Wey-Yu Corp — would approve.
“Alien: Earth” premieres August 12 on FX with new episodes weekly.
Source link
