Alien: Earth Brings Xenomorphs Back to TV This August

FX and Hulu have been teasing their upcoming prequel Alien: Earth for some time. On Friday, the streaming services revealed the final trailer (and an expanded description) for the series set to premiere on August 12, 2025. Alien: Earth will explore the origins of some of the most beloved elements from the Alien saga in both a chilling and thoughtful manner. Beautiful and almost meditative, the new trailer is filled with little moments of sci-fi horror: a slow-moving extraterrestrial craft floating through the inky void of space, dead and dying bodies sprawled in a shadowy corridor, a group of bloodied humans fleeing, and in the distance, a known shape…the unmistakable bulk of a xenomorph, moving in the darkness.

Alien: Earth‘s showrunner, Noah Hawley, is known for taking his time to develop his series, so he’s promised that the series’ tone and mythology will hew closer to Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) and less to subsequent prequels such as Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant. The series is set in 2120, a near-future world run by corporate entities where the pursuit of life…and immortality, perhaps?…has become a brutal enterprise.

In the Alien: Earth timeline, Earth’s world of 2120 is dominated by not governments, but five megacorporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. The series, set during this Corporate Era, features a blend of cyborgs (human beings augmented with artificial parts) and synthetics, humanoid robots powered by artificial intelligence. The balance of power shifts, though, when the young, visionary Founder and CEO of the Prodigy Corporation pioneers an evolution in technology: hybrids, humanoid robots given real, human consciousness.

Protagonist “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler) is one of these prototypes: “The body of an adult and the consciousness of a chil.,” She’s involved in the fight for immortality in 2120 when a Weyland-Yutani spaceship smashes into Prodigy City. Investigating the crash, Wendy and other Prodigy hybrids encounter unknown, alien organisms: creatures that are far deadlier than anything humanity has ever experienced before.

Joining Chandler in the cast is Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic trainer and mentor; Alex Lawther as soldier CJ; Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, the calculating CEO of the Prodigy Corporation; Essie Davis as Dame Silvia; Adarsh Gourav as Slightly; Kit Young as Tootles; David Rysdahl as Arthur; Babou Ceesay as Morrow; Jonathan Ajayi as Smee; Erana James as Curly; Lily Newmark as Nibs; Diem Camille as Siberian; and Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins.

Journey From Teaser to Trailer

FX and Hulu have been gradually building their Alien: Earth universe for some time now. In January, they dropped a surprise teaser short during the AFC Championship game of the NFL’s playoffs. That first teaser was shot entirely from the point of view of a xenomorph. The camera is with the creature as it barrels down a spaceship corridor, its spaceship itself hurtling toward Earth on a collision course. It was an unsettling little piece without any real context to understand it, but it instantly sent online fans into overdrive speculating.

That’s been the trend for the Alien: Earth teasers. Last month, FX and Hulu dropped a first full trailer for the series. It showed us the bulk of Wendy’s creation on the island of Neverland Research Island in 2120. As an alien spacecraft crashed near the research facility, Wendy was asked to investigate the crashed alien ship and take back its mysterious cargo. But instead of a valuable scientific opportunity, Wendy encountered carnage. Inside the wreckage, there were five alien life forms: deadly, unknown species in true Alien fashion that were brought back into the lab for experimentation.

The setup is an ominous one that will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the franchise’s origins: human hubris running into an apex predator. As the final trailer reveals, Alien: Earth is less concerned with action set pieces and is more about a slow burn of dread. How and why did the Xenomorphs come to exist in the first place, and how did a war between corporations come about that could make them take such reckless chances?

With Hawley’s focus on atmosphere and world-building and a cast of morally complicated characters, this looks to be more than just a monster movie. By leaning into the claustrophobic horror and the ethical questions and human flaws that made the original Alien such a classic, Alien: Earth looks to be a series that is both a love letter to the original and an expansion on its mythos.

Hawley has made it clear in interviews that this is a series that is more about thinking than about moving. It’s always been about building dread. The little windows into Alien: Earth have both teased at something special and deeper and promised a slow burn of dread leading to an inevitability: that both the corporate war in space and the introduction of the Xenomorph were inevitable. For more from Hawley, check out the “Alien Files” series Hawley did for SYFY in 2023, “Exploring the Post-Apocalyptic Alien Franchise.”

Alien: Earth debuts August 12 on FX and Hulu.