Though getting plenty of praise for his TV reinventions of “Fargo” and the X-Men comic spin-off “Legion,” creator Noah Hawley can’t always get projects made.
Hawley has taken shots at reviving several properties that have stalled or struggled in recent years. One was a script for a “Fantastic Four” Doctor Doom solo feature that appears to have been scrapped in the wake of Disney’s acquisition of Fox.
Another one further along was a new standalone film in the “Star Trek” franchise. Yet another was a pitch for an “Alien” TV show. Recently he told The Observer that the latter won’t happen and explained what he was trying to do with his pitch:
“‘Alien’ is on some level the complete opposite of ‘Star Trek’. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst. There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.’ If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it.
I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with ‘Legion,’ the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s aliens!'”
Hawley also went on to talk about his take on the “Star Trek” franchise and how his approach to that film is to steer it away from the Abrams-era features and back towards what truly defines it:
“What I love about Star Trek is that it’s not a war story. It’s not a story in which might makes right. It’s a story about exploration. It’s a story about creative problem solving. My favorite moment in all of Star Trek is in Wrath of Khan when Kirk puts on his reading glasses to lower Khan’s shields. It’s a brief moment that is so exhilarating because he’s using the best tool he has, which is his mind.
As much as I like the Chris Pine movies they were mostly about running from one end of the ship to the other to put out a fire, to stop a thing, and then before he could catch his breath he had to do something else. They’re much more action movies and what I wanted to get back to was this idea of humanity justifying existence in the universe by showing its best qualities.”
Paramount recently indicated a “Star Trek” movie is definitely in the works, and three scripts for the feature are currently under consideration – one of them being Hawleys. For now though they are less inclined to move forward on those due to the expense and soft box-office of the previous film “Star Trek Beyond”.
Hawley remains busy, his name still attached to a mini-series adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” for FX.
