After Ridley Scott’sAlienand James Cameron’sAlienswere praised as two of the greatest movies ever made, the beloved sci-fi horror franchise finally faltered with the release of its third installment, David Fincher’sAlien 3, which was panned by critics and underperformed at the box office. Although it was technically Fincher’s directorial debut, theFight Clubdirector has disavowed the movie because Fox executives meddled so much with his vision that the final product is unrecognizable from the project he had in mind.
Long before the controversial final cut ofAlien 3made it to screens, a few different screenwriters took a crack atfollowing up the action-packed spectacle ofAlienswith a new sequel. One draft was penned by William Gibson, a sci-fi legend and one of the pioneers of the cyberpunk subgenre, but according to the writer himself, nothing from his original script made it into the final movie. The screenplay for Fincher’s movie is credited to David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson, with the story attributed to Vincent Ward.
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Gibson’sAlien 3script was previously adaptedby Dark Horse into a five-issue comic book series that hit shelves in late 2018 and early 2019. However, this comic was drawn from a second draft that removed a lot of Gibson’s more radical ideas. According to the book cover, this new novelization will be based on the first draft, so those radical ideas – like a zero-gravity shootout – will remain intact.
TitledAlien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay, the novelization will be published by Titan Books on August 31. Since screenplays tend to read as very dry and technical, Gibson’s script has been turned into smoother, more legible prose by Hugo Award-winning sci-fi author Pat Cadigan, who’s been labeled the “Queen of Cyberpunk” for her contributions to the genre in which Gibson made his name.
In Gibson’s version ofAlien 3, instead of killing off allthe beloved supporting characters fromAliensoff-screen like the final movie, they make it to a military installation in outer space called “Anchorpoint,” where they’re attacked by an entirely new kind of xenomorph. Ripley, Newt, and Hicks uncover dark genetic experimentation going on at Anchorpoint involving the cloning and creation of xenomorphs.
Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplayisn’t the only highly anticipated film novelization being published this summer. Quentin Tarantino is marking his literary debut with anovelization ofOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodthat promises to flesh out the characters and their backstories more than the Oscar-winning 2019 movie had time to do.
TheAlienfranchise is now available on Disney Plus outside of the U.S.
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