Several years ago came the news that celebrated “Take Shelter,” “Mud” and “Midnight Shelter” director Jeff Nichols was set to pen and direct a remake the 1988 sci-fi racial allegory buddy cop thriller feature “Alien Nation”.
Well regarded at the time, James Caan starred in the original as a racist cop who is forced to team with a new partner (Mandy Patinkin), a member of an alien race who was one on a ship carrying 300,000 alien refugees which crashed here years before with the newcomers assimilating into Los Angeles life. The film was successful enough to spawn a TV series.
Then the project stalled in 2019 when Disney, having fully acquired 20th Century Fox by that time, effectively gutted Fox’s development slate – scrapping all but a handful of films.
Nearly two years on though, Nichols revealed he is ready to give it another go – this time in the form of a ten-episode limited series at Disney-owned 20th Century Studios.
Speaking on the Team Deakins podcast, Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone were asked if they’d ever work in the TV realm when Stone revealed how “Alien Nation” had morphed into a mini-series which “can be really flexible for expanding the script, bringing new characters.”
Nichols then confirmed it, and explained what happened:
“[We] spent three years building up an entire alien civilization and this set-up and all the characters. We were set to make it as our next big challenge, a $100 million studio film. Then Disney bought Fox and killed it, which was a little soul-crushing, to say the least.
They came in and asked if I would be interested in turning it into a series, potentially. So I have taken the script and broken it into ten episodes, and it’s under consideration right now. Who knows, the powers that be are deciding that.”
That suggests even if they move forward, we’re still several years from seeing it. Nichols became attached to a spin-off of the “A Quiet Place” franchise late last year and is developing a “Yankee Comandante” adaptation with Adam Driver to star.
Source: The Playlist
