peter1221 — 1 year ago(May 19, 2024 06:41 PM)

Remmy Harlin ("Deep Blue Sea," "Cliffhanger"), was originally considered to direct Alien 3, and he recently revealed his plans for the movie. Fox rejected his idea, which led Harlin to turn down the project.
https://www.slashfilm.com/1582253/ridiculous-reason-original-version-of-alien-3-shot-down-by-fox-exclusive/
"I always thought that I had a good idea," Renny Harlin, the movie's original director, said recently in an interview with /Film's Jacob Hall in honor of his upcoming film "The Strangers: Chapter 1," which is the first part of a whole new trilogy. So, what was Harlin's idea? To bring the Xenomorphs to Earth. Unfortunately, Fox executives didn't envision that approach working at the time. Why not? Here's what Harlin had to say about it:
"I was working on 'Alien 3' in '89, which was before 'Jurassic Park' and all those movies. So the concept of having these creatures on Earth for the studio, it felt scary and unattainable. For me, it was the natural evolution. We've had the 'Alien' with the truck drivers in space, we've had 'Aliens' with the Marines in space, and where do we go next? Let's bring the aliens on Earth and have them going through the cornfield. I had the poster already in my mind with the farmhouse and the cornfield in moonlight, and they are going through the cornfield. To this day, I think it would've been a ginormous hit movie because it would've been the first time anything like that was done. But for whatever reason, the studio felt like, 'Ah, the audience won't buy that.'"
Put simply, Fox executives of the day allegedly didn't feel that audiences would get invested in the idea of aliens on Earth. Yet, just four years after "Alien 3" hit theaters, "Independence Day" would go on to become one of the biggest movies of all time up to that point. What's more, FX is currently making an "Alien" TV show that will bring the action to Earth, which sort of brings the idea full circle. Harlin explained that he politely walked away from the project when he realized it couldn't live up to his own high expectations.