Disney and Netflix are reportedly sitting on an already finished ten-episode “Alien vs. Predator” anime series.
IGN reports that during an appearance on the Perfect Organism Podcast, former licensing director at 20th Century Fox Joshua Izzo (who helped founded Alien Day) shared details about the series and its delay. He explains:
“There is, sitting at Disney now, at 20th Studios, 10 episodes of a fully completed Alien vs. Predator anime series that I produced. It’s done. It’s in the can. It’s mixed; it’s finished. It was produced and story cracked by Eric Calderon and Dave Baker, two unbelievably crazy talented guys.”
Izzo says he pitched the idea of an “Alien vs. Predator” direct-to-disc animated series to then Fox Home Entertainment head Dave Bixler, who subsequently championed the project. Then Izzo presented the idea to consumer products chief Jeffrey Godsick.
He added that he pitched it as something the consumer products division could drive “rather than waiting for theatrical whenever a movie decides to come out.” At the time, “Alien Covenant” was still in early development.
Godsick approved the pitch, Izzo presented it to Home Entertainment and argued it would be easy for 20th Century Fox to produce since it owned nearly three decades of comic book content for both franchises. Thus there wouldn’t be any rights issues.
A director was then hired, rumoured to be Shinji Aramaki (“Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” “Harlock: Space Pirate”). Izzo and the director worked on ten episodes of the series, the events of which are set sometime after those of “Alien vs. Predator” and “Alien: Resurrection”.
Baker and Calderon served as Western animation consultants on the project, which would’ve been spread over three DVDs for its Western release and released individually for Japan.
The project, which Fox made for Netflix, ultimately became a victim of the Fox-Disney merger as the completed work is now sitting in a vault somewhere – torn between Disney and Netflix who became competitors in the streaming space.
