107-405: Titan Entertainment is a British entertainment company. It was founded from Forbidden Planet London in 1993 by Nick Landau and Vivian Cheung . The company comprises Forbidden Planet Limited and Titan Publishing Group , which has four divisions: Titan Books, Titan Comics, Titan Magazines, and Titan Merchandise. Titan Entertainment is the brand name of the group, outside of Forbidden Planet, and
214-420: A B-17 bomber during World War II , and set it on the spaceship as the second half of the story. The working title of the project was now Star Beast , but O'Bannon disliked this and changed it to Alien after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. O'Bannon and Shusett liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and an adjective . Shusett came up with
321-457: A heat wave , these conditions nearly caused the actors to pass out; nurses had to be kept on-hand with oxygen tanks. All of the visuals on the computer screens on the Nostromo' s bridge are computer-generated imagery (CGI). The staff used CGI because it was easier than any alternative. For scenes showing the exterior of the Nostromo , a 58-foot (18 m) landing leg was constructed to give
428-594: A wide release on June 22 and was released on September 6 in the United Kingdom. It initially received mixed reviews, but won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects , three Saturn Awards ( Best Science Fiction Film , Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright), and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation . Alien grossed $ 78.9 million in the United States and £7.8 million in
535-531: A chain of nine stores around England and an online presence at ForbiddenPlanet.com. They also host signings and events with authors, artists, and other figures from cult media. A separate company owned by some of Forbidden Planet's original founders. Spin-off Forbidden Planet NYC is an independent store in New York City . Alien (film) Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon , based on
642-664: A chain of stores in the UK, in addition to US stores in New York and Los Angeles. The Forbidden Planet chain comprised a number of mega stores in the UK, with the flagship store in London (which, over the years, has become world-renowned to fans of comic-books, movies, television, animation and gaming). As of 2023, Forbidden Planet London store has hosted over 2,000 signings. In 1981, Landau started Titan Books, publishers of both new and licensed graphic novels and film and TV tie-ins. Titan Books' first title
749-429: A deal with Brandywine, but Hill and Giler were not satisfied with the script and made numerous rewrites and revisions. This caused tension with O'Bannon and Shusett, since Hill and Giler had very little experience with science fiction; according to Shusett, "They weren't good at making it better, or, in fact, at not making it even worse." O'Bannon believed that Hill and Giler were attempting to justify taking his name off
856-408: A hen's egg was used on the poster and has become emblematic of the franchise as a whole—as opposed to the alien egg that appears in the finished film. The "facehugger" and its proboscis , which was made of a sheep's intestine , were shot out of the egg using high-pressure air hoses. The shot was reversed and slowed down in editing to prolong the effect and reveal more detail. The facehugger itself
963-494: A number of different companies and subsidiaries have been established, utilising the Titan name. In the early 1970s, Landau started trading his magazine Comic Media with US retailers. This evolved into a US fanzine importation service operating under the name Comic Media Distribution Service. On a trip to the US, an opportunity arose to expand this service into importing US newsstand comics into
1070-441: A project that took him to Paris for six months. Though the project ultimately fell through, it introduced him to several artists whose work gave him ideas for his science-fiction story including Chris Foss , H. R. Giger , and Jean "Moebius" Giraud . O'Bannon was impressed by Foss's covers for science-fiction books, while he found Giger's work "disturbing": "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that
1177-481: A realistic environment, a concept summarized as "truckers in space". According to Scott, this concept was inspired partly by Star Wars , which deviated from the pristine future often depicted in science-fiction films of the time. To assist the actors in preparing for their roles, Scott wrote several pages of backstory for each character explaining their histories. He filmed many of their rehearsals to capture spontaneity and improvisation, and tensions between some of
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#17328562188571284-414: A science-fiction comedy film, Dark Star , with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb , with production beginning in late 1970. The film featured an alien (created by spray-painting a beach ball and adding rubber "claws"), which was played for the comedic effect. The experience left O'Bannon "really wanting to do an alien that looked real ." A "couple of years" later he began work on
1391-471: A script titled Memory , containing what would become the opening scenes of Alien : a crew of astronauts awakens to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be. O'Bannon soon accepted an offer to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky 's adaptation of Dune ,
1498-606: A second store was opened just around the corner on St Giles High Street . The store's success led to overcrowding, necessitating a move to much larger premises on New Oxford Street . The original partners, in addition to improving their London store, paired with James Hamilton and Kenny Penman (today the main shareholders in Forbidden Planet International with Andrew Oddie, Richard Boxall and Colin Campbell) to open other stores. Penman and Hamilton were owners of one of
1605-435: A sense of the ship's size. Scott was not convinced that it looked large enough, so he had his two young sons and the son of Derek Vanlint (the film's cinematographer) stand in for the regular actors, wearing smaller space suits to make the set pieces seem larger. The same technique was used for the scene in which the crew members encounter the dead alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. The children nearly collapsed due to
1712-556: A similar story that would focus more on horror. "I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts", he later recalled, " Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy." Ronald Shusett , meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become Total Recall . Impressed by Dark Star , he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first, as they believed it would be less costly to produce. O'Bannon had written 29 pages of
1819-510: A small store in Denmark Street . Visitors to the store included Neil Gaiman , Alan Moore and Douglas Adams . When Adams attempted to attend a signing for the first The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book in 1979, the queue to the shop was so long that Adams thought a demonstration was taking place elsewhere. As the scope of the store expanded beyond comics to embrace film and television,
1926-424: A story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett . It follows a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spaceship and are hunted by a deadly extraterrestrial creature . The film stars Tom Skerritt , Sigourney Weaver , Veronica Cartwright , Harry Dean Stanton , John Hurt , Ian Holm , and Yaphet Kotto . It was produced by Gordon Carroll , David Giler , and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions and
2033-479: A technique he employed while working on Star Wars . For example, some of the Nostromo 's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area. Special-effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers and flamethrowers. Giger designed and worked on all
2140-445: A transmission from a nearby planet and awakens the crew. Following company policy to investigate transmissions indicating intelligent life, they land on the planet and Dallas, Kane, and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover that the transmission comes from a derelict alien spaceship, where they find the remains of a large alien with a hole in its torso. Later, Mother deciphers part of the transmission, which Ripley determines to be
2247-425: A warning message. Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large eggs. When he touches one, a spider-like creature springs out, penetrates his helmet, and attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo . As the acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash overrides her. While Parker and Brett work on repairing
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#17328562188572354-547: A wide range of original horror, science-fiction, fantasy, crime and thrillers. Titan Productions (which produced the West End stage play Thunderbirds: F.A.B. between 1989 and 1993) was originally part of the group, until it was sold to the John Gore Organization. In 1993, Landau became sole owner of Titan Books and Forbidden Planet (UK), establishing Titan Entertainment with his partner Vivian Cheung. Titan Magazines
2461-437: Is going to be very slow, very graceful, and the alien will alter shape so you never really know exactly what he looks like." Scott said: "I've never liked horror films before, because in the end it's always been a man in a rubber suit. Well, there's one way to deal with that. The most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw." The alien has been referred to as "one of
2568-515: Is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution . In April 2007, the original alien suit was sold at auction. Copious amounts of K-Y Jelly were used to simulate saliva and give the alien a slimy appearance. The alien vocalizations were provided by Percy Edwards , a voice artist who had provided bird sounds for British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the whale sounds for Orca: Killer Whale (1977). In most scenes,
2675-489: The Nostromo crew's discovery of the alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. O'Bannon has also noted the influence of "Junkyard" (1953), a short story by Clifford D. Simak in which a crew lands on an asteroid and discovers a chamber full of eggs. He has also cited as influences Strange Relations by Philip José Farmer (1960), which covers alien reproduction and various EC Comics horror titles carrying stories in which monsters eat their way out of people. With most of
2782-500: The Nostromo , Ash attempts to remove the creature from Kane's face. He stops when he discovers that its highly corrosive acidic blood could harm Kane and potentially damage the ship's hull. The creature eventually detaches itself and dies. After the crew returns to space, Kane awakens with some memory loss but otherwise seems well. During a final crew meal before returning to stasis, he suddenly chokes and convulses. A small alien creature bursts from his chest, killing him, and escapes into
2889-564: The Alien and Predator Films , asserts that part of the film's effectiveness in frightening viewers "comes from the fact that the audience can all identify with the characters...Everyone aboard the Nostromo is a normal, everyday, working Joe just like the rest of us. They just happen to live and work in the future." Alien was filmed over 14 weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. Principal photography took place at Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios near London, while model and miniature filming
2996-528: The Ash subplot, but also making the dialogue more natural and trimming some sequences set on the alien planetoid. Despite the fact that the final shooting script was written by Hill and Giler, the Writers Guild of America awarded O'Bannon sole credit for the screenplay. 20th Century-Fox did not express confidence in financing a science-fiction film. However, after the success of Star Wars in 1977, its interest in
3103-560: The Base of a Crucifixion . Giger's original design, which was refined, resembled a plucked chicken. Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon credits his experiences with Crohn's disease for inspiring the chest-bursting scene. For the filming of the chestburster scene, the cast members knew that the creature would be bursting out of Hurt, and had seen the chestburster puppet, but they had not been told that fake blood would also be bursting out in every direction from high-pressure pumps and squibs . The scene
3210-458: The Bristol store caught fire, the fire broke out at around 7.15pm. Avon Fire and Rescue Service confirmed that the blaze was not started on purpose. On 30th of September 2024 Forbidden Planet confirmed a 7th of December reopening confirmed the reopening will feature signings, costumed characters, decorations and goodie bags. Forbidden Planet Limited is division of Titan Entertainment and operate
3317-517: The London store moved to larger premises at the northern end of Shaftesbury Avenue . Forbidden Planet opened a second Megastore in Clifton Heights in Bristol in 2005, and a third in Southampton in 2007. In 2006 the company launched forbiddenplanet.com , an e-commerce retail site offering a wide range of products and hosting details of the company's many events and signings. On 24 July 2012,
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3424-536: The New York City store moved several doors south to 832 Broadway, where it would enjoy 3,400 square feet of retail space. The New York store is not part of Forbidden Planet International, as they are owned by rival organizations. Like many shops, Forbidden Planet struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic . The New York branch launched a GoFundMe to survive, in light of the city's high rent. On 3rd of December 2023,
3531-564: The Shell , etc). Titan Manga now publishes a variety of world English editions of celebrated Japanese manga, including Atom (the origin of Astro Boy ), Kamen Rider Kuuga , Afro Samurai , and Western-originated Americanised manga adaptations such as Cowboy Bebop and Robotech . Forbidden Planet London Forbidden Planet is the trading name of three separate businesses with online and retail bookstores selling science fiction, fantasy and popular culture products. The original store
3638-543: The UK and United States. Film, TV and gaming comics establishing itself as a high quality publisher of licensed properties. As of 2023, their publications include Gun Honey , Heatseeker , Doctor Who , Bloodborne , Blade Runner and Conan the Barbarian . Titan Manga was officially launched in 2023. Titan had already pioneered English language manga publishing throughout the 1990s and 2000s (publishing English-language editions of Akira , Crying Freeman , Ghost in
3745-804: The UK's oldest comics and SF stores, Science Fiction Bookshop, in Edinburgh, which opened around 1975. The first New York store opened in the early 1980s. It was originally located at 56 East 12th Street and Broadway in Greenwich Village . The store had one of the most extensive selections in the world of in-print science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, primarily from major genre labels such as Ballantine, Del Rey, Ace, and so on, but also some small press materials. There were also large and small press magazines, some hardbacks, tie-in toys and merchandise, and comics. They occasionally had book signing appearances by famous authors such as Douglas Adams . The location across
3852-460: The UK. At this time, a Brooklyn teacher named Phil Seuling took the first steps towards creating the direct market by setting up a direct sales service for US comic book retailers, creating a direct sales service between them and Marvel and DC. Landau was a vocal supporter of Seuling's initiative and Comic Media Distribution Service became Seuling's first international customer. After first being assisted by Richard Burton and then Mal Burns, Landau
3959-475: The United Kingdom during its first theatrical run. Its worldwide gross to date has been estimated at between $ 104 million and $ 203 million. In subsequent years, Alien was critically reassessed and is now considered one of the greatest and most influential science fiction and horror films of all time . In 2002, Alien was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and
4066-404: The adult Alien and would make it impossible for the crew to kill it by conventional means, such as guns or explosives, since the acid would burn through the ship's hull. For the scene in which the dead facehugger is examined, Scott used pieces of fish and shellfish to create its viscera . The "chestburster" design was inspired by Francis Bacon 's 1944 painting Three Studies for Figures at
4173-482: The airlock door. The resulting explosive decompression almost ejects the alien into space, but it hangs onto the door frame. Ripley fires a grappling hook gun to push it out and activates the engines, blasting the alien into space. After recording her final log entry, she places Jones and herself into stasis for the trip back to Earth. While studying cinema at the University of Southern California , Dan O'Bannon had made
4280-495: The alien aspects, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements. For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber, he used dried bones with plaster to sculpt the scenery and elements. Veronica Cartwright described Giger's sets as "so erotic...it's big vaginas and penises...the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb or whatever...it's sort of visceral." The set with
4387-404: The alien blocks her path to the shuttle. She retreats and unsuccessfully attempts to abort the self-destruct. She reaches the shuttle unhindered with Jones, narrowly escaping as the Nostromo explodes. As Ripley prepares for stasis, she discovers the alien has stowed itself in a narrow compartment. She dons a spacesuit and flushes it out. It approaches Ripley, but before it can kill her, she opens
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4494-475: The alien creature", while Ivor Powell suggested that "Dallas is found in the ship as an egg, still alive." Scott remarked, "they're morphing, metamorphosing , they are changing into...being consumed, I guess, by whatever the alien's organism is...into an egg." The scene was cut partly because it did not look realistic enough, but also because it slowed the pace of the escape sequence. Tom Skerritt remarked that "The picture had to have that pace. Her trying to get
4601-743: The alien creatures became the thematic and narrative core of the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). A crossover with the Predator franchise produced the Alien vs. Predator films, while a two-film prequel series was directed by Scott before Alien: Romulus (2024). The commercial space tug Nostromo is returning to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis : captain Dallas, executive officer Kane, warrant officer Ripley , navigator Lambert, science officer Ash , and engineers Parker and Brett. The ship's computer, Mother, detects
4708-419: The alien was portrayed by Bolaji Badejo. A latex costume was made to fit Badejo's slender 6-foot-10-inch (208 cm) frame by taking a full-body plaster cast. Scott later said that the alien "takes on elements of the host – in this case, a man". Badejo attended tai chi and mime classes to create convincing movements. For some scenes, such as when the alien lowers itself from the ceiling to kill Brett, it
4815-482: The artwork of H. R. Giger ; both of them felt that his painting Necronom IV was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer. Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out. According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that
4922-418: The background. That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real. —Ron Cobb on his designs for Alien O'Bannon brought in artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, with whom he had worked on Dark Star and Dune respectively, to work on designs for the human aspects such as the spaceship and space suits. Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of
5029-415: The biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved." Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work on all aspects of the alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the alien from the egg to the adult. The scene of Kane inspecting the egg was shot in postproduction. A fiberglass egg
5136-455: The cast members, particularly towards the less-experienced Weaver; this translated convincingly to film as tension between the characters. Roger Ebert notes that the actors in Alien were older than was typical in thriller films at the time, which helped make the characters more convincing: None of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm
5243-493: The chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its 'open, dripping vaginal mouth'." The sets of the Nostromo ' s three decks were each created almost entirely in one piece, with each deck occupying a separate stage. The actors had to navigate through the hallways that connected the stages, adding to the sense of claustrophobia and realism. The sets used large transistors and low-resolution computer screens to give
5350-589: The city, eventually replacing what had been the leading shop, Derek Stokes's Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed , which had started in 1969, and coming after Frank and Joan Dobson's Weird Fantasy in New Cross . Much of FP's growth came after the demise of Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed, which went out of business in 1981. Mike Lake, Nick Landau , and Mike Luckman founded Forbidden Planet alongside Titan Distributors (Titan having grown out of Comic Media Distributors ). The first Forbidden Planet began life in 1978 as
5457-403: The company's orders. Ash states that the alien is unkillable and expresses his admiration for it, taunting them about their chances of survival. Ripley shuts him down and Parker incinerates him. The crew decides to self-destruct the Nostromo and escape in the shuttle. While gathering supplies, Parker and Lambert are killed by the alien. Now alone, Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence, but
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#17328562188575564-430: The deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the "space jockey", proved problematic, as 20th Century-Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team convinced the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this
5671-414: The end credits. Scott and Rawlings had also become attached to several of the musical cues they had used for the temporary score while editing the film, and re-edited some of Goldsmith's cues and rescored several sequences to match these cues and even left the temporary score in place in some parts of the finished film. Goldsmith later said, "You can see that I was sort of like going at opposite ends of
5778-537: The film in London, which impressed Fox enough to double the film's budget. His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits , drawing on such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars . However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in Alien rather than fantasy, describing the film as " The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction". Casting calls and auditions were held in New York City and London. With only seven human characters in
5885-443: The film to suspense and fear. Scott did not like Goldsmith's original main title piece, however, so Goldsmith rewrote it as "the obvious thing: weird and strange, and which everybody loved." Another source of tension was editor Terry Rawlings ' choice to use pieces of Goldsmith's music from previous films, including a piece from Freud: The Secret Passion , and to use an excerpt from Howard Hanson 's Symphony No. 2 ("Romantic") for
5992-482: The film's most memorable moments. During preview screenings, the crew noticed that some viewers would move towards the back of the theater so as not to be too close to the screen during the sequence. The scene has frequently been called one of the most memorable moments in cinema history. In 2007, Empire named it as the greatest 18-rated moment in film, ranking it above the decapitation scene in The Omen (1976) and
6099-474: The final version is just under two hours. One scene that was cut from the film occurred during Ripley's final escape from the Nostromo ; she encounters Dallas and Brett, who have been partially cocooned by the alien. O'Bannon had intended the scene to indicate that Brett was becoming an alien egg, while Dallas was held nearby to be implanted by the resulting facehugger. Production designer Michael Seymour later suggested that Dallas had "become sort of food for
6206-515: The final version. He sculpted the body using plasticine , incorporating pieces such as vertebrae from snakes and cooling tubes from a Rolls-Royce . The head was manufactured separately by Carlo Rambaldi , who had worked on the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Rambaldi followed Giger's designs closely, making some modifications to incorporate the moving parts that would animate
6313-590: The flamethrower. Lambert suggests fleeing in the escape shuttle, but Ripley, now in command, explains that it will not support four people and insists on continuing Dallas's plan to flush out the alien. While accessing Mother, Ripley discovers that the crew was awoken and directed to the planet because the company secretly ordered Ash to return with the alien for study, and to consider the crew expendable. She confronts Ash, who tries to kill her. Parker intervenes, knocking Ash's head loose and revealing him to be an android . The survivors reactivate Ash's head, and he confirms
6420-583: The focus became comic books and graphic novels, with a greatly diminished selection of traditional fiction. In 1992/1993, the original chain split into two firms, called Forbidden Planet and Forbidden Planet Scotland (later renamed Forbidden Planet International ). Forbidden Planet International grew beyond Scotland to include stores throughout the Midlands , in Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and majority ownership of two stores in New York. On 30 September 2003,
6527-449: The genre rose substantially. According to Carroll: "When Star Wars came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre." O'Bannon recalled that "They wanted to follow through on Star Wars , and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien ". Alien was greenlit by 20th Century-Fox, with an initial budget of $ 4.2 million. It
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#17328562188576634-413: The heat of the suits; oxygen systems were eventually added to help the actors breathe. Four identical cats were used to portray Jones, the crew's pet. During filming, Weaver discovered that she was allergic to the combination of cat hair and the glycerin placed on the actors' skin to make them appear sweaty. By removing the glycerin she was able to continue working with the cats. Alien originally
6741-458: The hell out of there, we're all rooting for her to get out of there, and for her to slow up and have a conversation with Dallas was not appropriate." The footage was included with other deleted scenes as a special feature on the Laserdisc release of Alien , and a shortened version of it was reinserted into the 2003 Director's Cut, which was re-released in theaters and on DVD . The musical score
6848-464: The idea of professional men being pursued by a deadly alien creature through a claustrophobic environment. Forbidden Planet (1956) gave O'Bannon the idea of a ship being warned not to land, and then the crew being killed one by one by a mysterious creature when they defy the warning. Planet of the Vampires (1965) contains a scene in which the heroes discover a giant alien skeleton ; this influenced
6955-436: The idea that one of the crew members could be implanted with an alien embryo that would burst out of him; he thought this would be an interesting plot device by which the alien could board the ship. Dan [O'Bannon] put his finger on the problem: what has to happen next is the creature has to get on the ship in an interesting way. I have no idea how, but if we could solve that, if it can't be that it just snuck in, then I think
7062-425: The interior settings of the ship in a realistic and believable manner. Under Scott's direction, the design of the Nostromo shifted towards an 800-foot-long (240 m) tug towing a refining platform 2 miles (3.2 km) long and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide. Cobb also created some conceptual drawings of the alien, which went unused. Moebius was attached to the project for a few days and his costume renderings were
7169-413: The jaw and inner mouth. A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the rigid tongue, which protruded from the mouth and featured a second mouth at its tip with its own set of movable teeth. The final head had about 900 moving parts and points of articulation. Part of a human skull was used as the "face", and was hidden under the smooth, translucent cover of the head. Rambaldi's original alien jaw
7276-399: The most iconic movie monsters", and its biomechanical appearance and sexual overtones have been frequently noted. Roger Ebert wrote that " Alien uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: it evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do... The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from
7383-485: The name to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan, deriving "Weylan" from the British Leyland Motor Corporation and "Yutani" from the name of his Japanese neighbor. The 1986 sequel, Aliens , named the company "Weyland-Yutani", and it has remained a central aspect of the franchise. Art director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props to save money,
7490-478: The need to shorten the film. Instead, the egg chamber was set inside the derelict ship and was filmed on the same set as the space-jockey scene; the entire disc piece supporting the jockey and its chair was removed and the set was redressed to create the egg chamber. Light effects in the egg chamber were created by lasers borrowed from English rock band the Who . The band was testing the lasers for use in their stage show on
7597-404: The other characters. Shusett and he had intentionally written all the roles generically; they made a note in the script that explicitly states, "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women." This freed Scott, Selway, and Goldberg to interpret the characters as they pleased, and to cast accordingly. They wanted the Nostromo ' s crew to resemble working astronauts in
7704-553: The planetoid's surface and derelict spacecraft based on Giger's designs, then made moulds and casts and scaled them up as diagrams for the wood and fiberglass forms of the sets. Tons of sand, plaster, fiberglass, rock, and gravel were shipped into the studio to sculpt a desert landscape for the planetoid's surface, which the actors would walk across wearing space-suit costumes. The suits were thick, bulky, and lined with nylon , had no cooling systems, and initially, no venting for their exhaled carbon dioxide to escape. Combined with
7811-430: The plot in place, Shusett and O'Bannon presented their script to several studios, pitching it as " Jaws in space". They were on the verge of signing a deal with Roger Corman 's studio when a friend offered to find them a better deal and passed the script on to Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill, who had formed a production company called Brandywine with ties to 20th Century-Fox . O'Bannon and Shusett signed
7918-453: The pole with the filmmakers." Nevertheless, Scott praised Goldsmith's score as "full of dark beauty" and "seriously threatening, but beautiful". It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score , a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album , and it won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music . The score has been released as a soundtrack album in several versions with different tracks and sequences. O'Bannon introduced Scott to
8025-441: The producers vetoed this idea, because they believed the alien should die at the end of the film. Editing and post-production took roughly 20 weeks and concluded in late January 1979. The editor, Terry Rawlings, had previously worked with Scott on editing sound for The Duellists . Scott and Rawlings edited much Alien to have a slow pace to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think
8132-421: The script and claiming Shusett's and his work as their own. Hill and Giler did add some substantial elements to the story, including the android character Ash, which O'Bannon felt was an unnecessary subplot but which Shusett later described as "one of the best things in the movie...That whole idea and scenario was theirs." Hill and Giler went through eight drafts of the script in total, concentrating largely on
8239-486: The ship a "used", industrial look and make it appear as though it was constructed of "retrofitted old technology". Ron Cobb created industrial-style symbols and color-coded signs for various areas and aspects. The company that owns the Nostromo is not named in the film, and is referred to by the characters as "the company". However, the name and logo of the company appears on several set pieces and props such as computer monitors and beer cans as "Weylan-Yutani". Cobb created
8346-559: The ship might have been a weapons-carrier capable of dropping alien eggs onto a planet so that the aliens could use the local lifeforms as hosts. In early versions of the script, the eggs were to be located in a separate pyramid structure, which would be found later by the Nostromo crew and would contain statues and hieroglyphs depicting the alien reproductive cycle, contrasting the human, alien, and space-jockey cultures. Cobb, Foss, and Giger each created concept artwork for these sequences, but they were discarded due to budgetary concerns and
8453-415: The ship, which went through many design concepts and possible names such as Leviathan and Snark as the script developed. The final name was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad 's 1904 novel Nostromo , while the escape shuttle, called Narcissus in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' . The production team particularly praised Cobb's ability to depict
8560-456: The ship. After ejecting Kane's body out of an airlock, the crew attempts to locate the creature using tracking devices and kill it. Brett follows the crew's pet cat, Jones , into a landing leg compartment, where the now fully grown alien attacks Brett. The crew determines that the alien must be in the air ducts. Dallas enters the ducts with a flamethrower, intending to force the creature into an airlock, but it attacks him. Parker later finds only
8667-421: The sound stage next door. I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science-fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in
8774-399: The story, Scott sought to hire strong actors so he could focus most of his energy on the film's visual style. He employed casting director Mary Selway , who had worked with him on The Duellists , to head the casting in the United Kingdom, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States. In developing the story, O'Bannon had focused on writing the alien first, putting off developing
8881-562: The street from the Strand Bookstore and less than a mile from Baird Searles ' The Science Fiction Shop made the area a mecca for genre fans. An additional New York store opened in the mid-1980s at 227 East 59th Street in Lenox Hill , with a smaller selection. Rising rent led to its closure in the 1990s. In the 1990s, the primary New York store moved across the street to a significantly smaller space at 840 Broadway and East 13th Street, and
8988-549: The task, but O'Bannon, Shusett, and the Brandywine team felt that these directors would not take the film seriously and would instead treat it as a B monster movie . According to Cobb, Steven Spielberg was also considered to direct the film and was interested but prior obligations prevented him to directing the film. Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Ridley Scott's debut feature film The Duellists (1977) and made an offer to him to direct Alien , which Scott quickly accepted. Scott created detailed storyboards for
9095-529: The transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London (1981). IGN ranked it the 10th-best film moment of all time. For the scene in which Ash is revealed to be an android, a puppet was created of his torso and upper body, which was operated from underneath. During a preview screening, this scene caused an usher to faint. In the following scene, Ash's head is placed on a table and reactivated; for portions of this scene, an animatronic head
9202-420: The way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked." The first cut of the film was over three hours long;
9309-502: The whole movie will come into place. In the middle of the night, I woke up and I said, "Dan I think I have an idea: the alien screws one of them [...] it jumps on his face and plants its seed!" And Dan says, oh my god, we've got it, we've got the whole movie. —Screenwriter Ron Shusett O'Bannon drew inspiration from many works of science fiction and horror. He later said: "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody !" The Thing from Another World (1951) inspired
9416-536: Was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 30 and Weaver at 28 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, Alien achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth. David McIntee , author of Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to
9523-580: Was a trade paperback collection of Brian Bolland 's Judge Dredd stories from 2000 AD . This was one of the earliest high-quality, book-format publications of comic material in the UK and Titan Books followed this first title with many other 2000 AD reprints. Subsequently, Titan Books expanded operations, putting out its first original title in 1987. As of 2023, Titan Books is a global publishing company comprising illustrated and fiction divisions. Titan Books originally focused on film, TV and gaming tie-ins - and now both publishes in these categories and creates
9630-502: Was composed by Jerry Goldsmith , conducted by Lionel Newman , and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra . Scott had originally wanted the film to be scored by Isao Tomita , but Fox wanted a more familiar composer and Goldsmith was recommended by then-president of Fox Alan Ladd Jr. Goldsmith wanted to create a sense of romanticism and lyrical mystery in the film's opening scenes, which would build throughout
9737-468: Was distributed by 20th Century-Fox . Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The alien creatures and environments were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger , while the concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the other sets. Alien premiered on May 25, 1979, the opening night of the fourth Seattle International Film Festival . It received
9844-491: Was done at Bray Studios in Water Oakley , Berkshire . The production schedule was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century-Fox to finish on time. A crew of over 200 craftspeople and technicians constructed the three principal sets: the surface of the alien planetoid, and the interiors of the Nostromo and the derelict spacecraft. Art director Les Dilley created 1 ⁄ 24 -scale miniatures of
9951-452: Was funded by North Americans, but made by 20th Century-Fox's British production subsidiary. O'Bannon had originally assumed that he would direct Alien , but 20th Century-Fox instead asked Hill to direct. Hill declined due to other film commitments, as well as not being comfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required. Peter Yates , John Boorman , Jack Clayton , Robert Aldrich , and Robert Altman were considered for
10058-478: Was joined by Mike Lake and Mike Luckman at Comic Media Distribution Service. Landau and his partners came to feel that the company had grown out of its original name and re-branded their operation with Landau's choice of company identity: Titan Distributors. In order to support their distribution business, Landau, Lake, and Luckman opened the first Forbidden Planet bookstore, on Denmark Street in London, in 1978. From 1978 through to 1993, Forbidden Planet grew to be
10165-410: Was launched in 2012 and produces licensed merchandise for global properties, including Marvel Comics , Star Wars , Doctor Who , The Beatles , Star Trek , Alien , Breaking Bad , Ghostbusters , and Hammer Horror . Titan Comics was launched in 2012, with the intention of championing creators and original material publishing high quality comics, trade paperbacks and graphic novels across
10272-408: Was made using a face cast of Holm. However, the latex of the head shrank while curing and the result was not entirely convincing. For the bulk of the scene, Holm knelt under the table with his head through a hole. Milk, caviar, pasta, fiber optics , and Foley urinary catheters were combined to form the android innards. Giger made several conceptual paintings of the adult alien before settling on
10379-405: Was not a B movie . To save money, only one wall of the set was created, and the "space jockey" sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors. Giger airbrushed the entire set and the "space jockey" by hand. The origin of the jockey creature is not explored, but Scott later theorized that it might have been the ship's pilot, and that
10486-428: Was opened in London in 1978 named after the 1956 feature film of the same name . Specialising in film and television merchandise, the shops sell comic books , graphic novels , fantasy and horror , manga , DVDs , video games , and a wide variety of co-branded edition / collector's items , promotional apparel and merchandise and collector's items . Forbidden Planet London was the third major comics store in
10593-420: Was portrayed by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell. Powell, in costume, was suspended on wires and then lowered in an unfurling motion. Scott chose not to show the full alien for most of the film, keeping most of its body in shadow to create a sense of terror and heighten suspense. The audience could thus project their own fears into imagining what the rest of the creature might look like: "Every movement
10700-533: Was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster." After the Dune project collapsed, O'Bannon found himself homeless and broke, and returned to Los Angeles where he would borrow Shusett's couch. In need of money he decided to write a spec script the studios would buy, and the two revived his Memory script. Shusett suggested that O'Bannon use one of his other film ideas, about gremlins infiltrating
10807-564: Was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry . In 2008, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre, and as the 33rd-greatest film of all time by Empire . The success of Alien spawned a media franchise of films, books, video games, and toys , and propelled Weaver's acting career. The story of her character 's encounters with
10914-436: Was shot in one take using an artificial torso filled with blood and viscera, with Hurt's head and arms coming up from underneath the table. The chestburster was shoved up through the torso by a puppeteer who held it on a stick. When the creature burst through the chest, a stream of blood shot directly at Cartwright, shocking her enough that she fell over and went into hysterics. According to Tom Skerritt, "What you saw on camera
11021-434: Was the first creature that H.R. Giger designed for the film, going through several versions in different sizes before deciding on a small creature with human-like fingers and a long tail. Dan O'Bannon, with help from Ron Cobb, drew his own version based on Giger's design, which became the final version. Cobb came up with the idea that the creature could have a powerful acid for blood, a characteristic that would carry over to
11128-638: Was the first division launched under Titan Entertainment in 1995, as a UK and later international newsstand publisher of genre titles. Titan Magazines originally published Star Trek Magazine, the Wallace and Gromit comic, UK editions of Simpsons Comics and a slew of licensed TV & film fantasy titles ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Battlestar Galactica , Star Wars , etc). Featuring articles written by key entertainment industry figures such as J. J. Abrams and J. Michael Straczynski . Titan Merchandise
11235-409: Was the real response. She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up." The creature then runs off-camera, an effect accomplished by cutting a slit in the table for the puppeteer's stick to go through and passing an air hose through the puppet's tail to make it whip about. The real-life surprise of the actors gave the scene an intense sense of realism and made it one of
11342-429: Was to conclude with the destruction of the Nostromo while Ripley escapes in the shuttle Narcissus . However, Scott conceived of a "fourth act" in which Ripley is forced to confront the alien on the shuttle. He pitched the idea to 20th Century-Fox and negotiated an increase in the budget to film it over several extra days. Scott had wanted the alien to bite off Ripley's head and make the final log entry in her voice, but
11449-400: Was used so that actor John Hurt could shine his light on it and see movement inside, which was provided by Scott fluttering his hands inside the egg while wearing rubber gloves. The top of the egg was hydraulic, and the innards were a cow's stomach and tripe . Test shots of the eggs were filmed using hen's eggs, and this footage was used in early teaser trailers. For this reason, the image of
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