Dear friends,
Yesterday it was confirmed that Ridley Scott will direct an Alien Prequel scripted by Jon Spaihts. I glad that Mr. Scott is returning to the franchise that he started. To me personally, this meant that I should finally stop my work on ALIEN PLANET because these guys are hopefully gonna rock the franchise again.
The idea for ALIEN PLANET came back in 2005 when a short film that I wanted to do was cancelled just one day before shooting. I was at the end of my powers and hid myself in my apartment, while watching the Alien Quadrilogy Box that had just come out. What I do when I fail is to get myself together and be creative. Originally I wanted to write my screenplay DYNAMIT, a German teenage portrayal that is the filmic equivalent to the Smith's "There is a Light", but then I realized it was too real and authentic for what I was needing at this moment. And when I watched the Quadrilogy features, everyone was constantly talking about how they were looking for the right idea for a last part of the franchise. Although I'm a geek, I'm not a crazy Alien fan. I never watched a Predator or AvP film or read any of the comics. But I realized there was something really fascinating in it and that was the evolution of the character Ripley. That got me hooked.
If you watch the first four Alien films, I think it is pretty clear where this is heading to. It should be a film about some sort of Salvation in the end. Without even thinking about it, I wrote myself to another place. It was pretty easy, because I had the desire to see a film that follows a long lost tradition: Bringing the audience to a new and alien place. A film that makes them explore new worlds. And a film that could be scary again. At that time I was really fascinated by the possibilities of story telling in 3D movies. You can read an essay that I wrote on this topic at CC2K http://tinyurl.com/lz34lz. I believed that you could redefine horror films, not in the gimmicky way ala My Bloody Valentine, but more in a direction that leads us to people like Gaspar Noe or Chris Cunningham.
And so I wrote a German Alien screenplay that concluded Ripley's story and brought us to the home planet of the Aliens. What came out was a very emotional coming of age story about 200 year old Ripley. A naturalistic film without guns about survival and what makes us human. The Alien films follow a cycle. To me, the first was about birth, the second was about life, the third about sacrifice and the fourth about evolution. The last one should be ultimately about death, or less dramatic, about the end of an life. It was minimal B-movie like the original Alien screenplay, but it had the potential to not only scare but to give the audience an emotional ride.
I never thought that I was going to do anything with this screenplay. Even at the beginning, I saw this as an exercise and had no illusions about the big Hollywood industry. So I just put it into my idea box and was done with it. But once in a while there would be news about the franchise or I would talk about it with people, always a little embarrassed that I was a guy who wrote an Alien screenplay, who was a dreamer. And suddenly people would ask for it, I would send it out and get a response. It was crazy. I decided to start a blog (http://alienv.blogspot.com) and got input from all these fans that sent in their art or ideas. It was a nice time, and while the original plan to do a concept art reel failed (and let me note that I know that it was a bit ridiculous and that FOX would never listen to some geeks), it was a fresh experience and I learned a lot about publicity and how even people who totally dismiss the project as unrealistic and stupid would add something to the open discussion, as did my stubborness in these talks. I also realized slowly that this was less about selling the script one day, but more about a fan experience. In times when the online press is often used as a PR tool by the industry it was somehow fresh and stupid to work on Alien Planet. The film will probably never get made, but for those who read it, it is an experience they saw in front of their eyes. If you write fiction this is all that matters.
Today, when I read the news about Scott doing another film, I decided to make the screenplay available on the blog and through this email. Sure it's not perfect, I'm still learning, my basic English translation is flawed, especially in the dialogues, and the characters could be tighter and more fleshed out in the first act, but in the end it has a heart. And that is what most films lack. Feel free to read this as pure entertainment with a glass of wine, with Sigur Ros, Efterklang or Clint Mansell music in the background. A screenplay that you can imagine as a what-if, as a 3D film, and nothing more, something that takes you into another mood - to another planet. This is meant for daydreamers. Feel free to copy, paste and forward it!
For those that fear any legal response, the screenplay is registered at the WGA West under the mysterious ID 1161616. I don't know what the hell that means ;-)
I wish Scott Free and Fox good luck. Let's colaborate, create and be productive. |
