Random Surprising Facts You Didn't Know About Alien (43 items)

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  (#44) Ridley Scott Wasn't the First Choice to Start the Franchise

  Potential directors, who either were considered by the studio or wanted to direct the film, included Robert Aldrich, Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, Dan O'Bannon, and Walter Hill. Aldrich in particular came very close to being hired, but the producers ultimately decided against it after they met him in person, and it quickly became apparent that he had no real enthusiasm for the project beyond the money he would have made.

  According to David Giller, the moment when Aldrich talked himself out of the job came when they asked him what kind of a design he had in mind for the facehugger; Aldrich simply shrugged and said "We'll put some entrails on the guy's face. It's not as if anyone's going to remember that critter once they've left the theater."
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  (#23) The Alien Queen Was Recreated Thanks to an Alien Superfan

   

  To preserve the shock-value of the alien's appearance, no production images of it were released, not even to author Alan Dean Foster when he was writing the novelization of the first film.
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  (#42) Alien Resurrection Helped Inspire Firefly in a Roundabout Way

  Joss Whedon has commented on his dissatisfaction with the movie. Fans had speculated that the finished article deviated from his original script in some fatal manner, however he put such rumors to rest stating that his dialogue, action, and plot were essentially intact. However, he had written with a playful, tongue-in-cheek tone, which didn't work when the director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, decided to "play it straight."
  
  In 2005, Whedon said, "It wasn't a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending; it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong they could possibly do. That's actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking. Because everything they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from it. And people assume that if I hated it then they'd changed the script... but it wasn't so much they changed it, they executed it in such a ghastly fashion they rendered it unwatchable."

  Eventually, the Betty and her crew became the prototypes for Whedon's Firefly, which captured the tone for which he had been aiming. 
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  (#40) David Fincher Has Completely Disowned Alien 3

  First-time director David Fincher disowned Alien 3, citing constant studio interference, and actually walked out of production before final editing began. He did preside over a rough cut that became the basis for the "Assembly Cut," a longer version of the film, later released on DVD and Blu-ray.

  With the release of the definitive Alien Quadrilogy on DVD in 2004, 20th Century Fox offered David Fincher the proverbial olive branch and asked him to assemble and comment on his own Director's Cut. Fincher declined. He was the only one of the four Alien directors to refuse to have anything to do with the project.
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  (#4) They Scheduled Aliens Around the Marines' On-Screen Relationship

  Like most films, the movie wasn't shot in sequence. But for added realism, James Cameron filmed the scene in which we first meet the Colonial Marines last, even though it's one of the earliest scenes in the film. This was so that the camaraderie of the Marines was realistic because the actors had spent months filming together before shooting the scene.
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  (#14) Sigourney Weaver's Aliens Pay Day Was the Entire Alien Budget

  Sigourney Weaver was paid $11 million to come back as Ripley, which was the entire budget of Alien.

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