“Alien: Romulus” Star Cailee Spaeny Reveals New Entry Set Between Iconic First Two Films
At Monday night’s Gotham Awards, the annual celebration of independent film, Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny managed to drop a juicy piece of news for a film that’s decidedly not an indie. Spaeny is a featured player in Fede Alvarez‘s upcoming Alien: Romulus, a fresh entry in one of the most iconic sci-fi franchises of them all. We’ve known for a while that Romulus was billed as a standalone film within the broader Alien universe, but now Spaeny revealed to Variety precisely where Romulus will be set in the franchise and how key creators from the previous films are pitching in.
“It’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie,” Spaeny told Variety. “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.”
The franchise began, of course, with Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 Alien, which made an action star of Sigourney Weaver as her Ellen Ripley battled and eventually vanquished the aforementioned xenomorph after a grueling duel aboard the spaceship the USCSS Nostromo. James Cameron picked up the story seven years later with Aliens, which followed Ripley joining a military mission to a space colony to investigate a xenomorph attack. Romulus slotting between these two films could give it license to connect to these major events in the franchise.
Spaeny reminded Variety that her first film was the 2018 big-budget sci-fi romp Pacific Rim: Uprising, so working on Romulus brought her back to her big breakthrough.
“I feel like I’m going back to that world,” Spaney told Variety. “And I have so much fun. I like trying to do as many different things as I can. So I swapped my high heels and my beehive for spacesuits and lots of wire work. … I love watching those old ‘70s, ‘80s action sci-fi films. And I’m such a fan of that IP and Sigourney Weaver. It’s legendary to get to be a part of it.”
You can see Spaeny in those high heels and beehive in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which is playing in select theaters now.
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Featured image: A scene from “Alien: Covenant.” Courtesy 20th Century Studios.
