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We now know when Alien: Romulus is set - fans of the original will be happy

The timeline for the new Alien will change the franchise forever...

We now know when Alien: Romulus is set - fans of the original will be happy
Marc Chacksfield
28 November 2023

New details have emerged about the upcoming Alien: Romulus movie, with main star Cailee Spaeny revealing where in the sprawling Alien timeline the movie will be set.

Alien: Romulus has wrapped and will be out in 2024. There are big hopes for the film, with Fox having upgraded the movie from a straight-to-streaming affair to one that will be on the big screen.

Couple this with the recent news that Ridley Scott has seen the thing, thanks to director Fede Álvarez wanting him to be the first person to watch it, and loved it, and we already had high hopes for this one.

Those hopes have been catapulted into the stratosphere, though, with Cailee Spaeny's revelation about when the movie is set.

Speaking to Variety, she explained: "It’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie.

"They brought the same team from Aliens, the James Cameron film. The same people who built those xenomorphs actually came on and built ours. So getting to see the original design with the original people who have been working on these films for 45-plus years and has been so much of their life has been really incredible."

Wow. So, the new Alien will be a retrofit so that it fills in some of the events in the 57 years between the first and second movies. With the news that Cameron's crew was back, it feels like this one will be closer in time to the events of Aliens.

This was something Álvarez hinted at in a Tweet, when he showed off the books he was using to research the script.


Álvarez has revealed that the movie will be a standalone film, but that doesn't mean that there won't be some strands to the previous stories, it just won't hinge on those. Having a film with the same look and feel of these two iconic entries into the franchise, though, should make this one rather special.