Alien: Romulus brings plenty of blood & practical effects in footage screened at CinemaCon

Last Updated on April 14, 2024

Last month, 20th Century Studios unveiled a teaser trailer for Alien: Romulus, director Fede Álvarez’s contribution to the Alien franchise that is set to reach theatres on August 16th. (You can watch the teaser HERE.) With the release date just four months away, Alien: Romulus received some love during the Disney panel at CinemaCon.

An exclusive extended scene from Alien: Romulus was screened a CinemaCon which followed Cailee Spaeny’s character wandering through a broken-down spaceship corridor with Aileen Wu’s character. They see a ripped-apart android among the debris. David Jonsson’s character, who is an android himself, is rebooting with an interesting effect in his eyes, but at that moment, a swarm of face-huggers burst into the room, chasing the characters out. We saw a bit of this scene in the teaser.

One character turns out to have been impregnated by a face-hugger, with a baby xenomorph bursting through their ribcage in an extremely bloody scene. The face-hugger and baby xeno are quite close to their appearances in the original movie, and best of all, they’re done with beautiful practical effects. The tone is said to be very similar to Álvarez’s Evil Dead movie, although not quite as bloody but still far more visceral than either Prometheus or Alien: Covenant.

When this project was announced near the start of 2022, it was said that Álvarez pitched the idea to Ridley Scott years ago and it stuck with Scott. So in late 2021, he called Álvarez and asked if he still wanted to make an Alien movie. Clearly, the answer was yes. 20th Century Studios division president Steve Asbell told The Hollywood Reporter that they picked up the project “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch. It was just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.“

It has also been said that the story Álvarez and his frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues crafted for Alien: Romulus is not connected to the other films in the Alien franchise – but it’s not ignoring any of the other entries, either. Álvarez has been clear about the fact that his story takes place within the established franchise continuity, slotting in between the events of Alien and Aliens. It has the following official logline: The sci-fi/horror-thriller takes the phenomenally successful “Alien” franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

The cast of Alien: Romulus includes Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) and David Jonsson (Industry), as well as Isabela Merced (Madame Web), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), and Aileen Wu (Away from Home). Merced has said there’s a scene in the film that’s so disgusting that a lot of viewers will have to look away, so that goes along with the “graphic and gruesome” description. “Graphic and gruesome” is what we expected from this movie as soon as it was announced that it was being made by the director of Evil Dead 2013 and Don’t Breathe.

This new Alien movie is coming to us from Momentum and 20th Century Studios, with Ridley Scott producing through his Scott Free banner.

In addition to Alien: Romulus, the CinemaCon crowd also got a look at The Amateur, starring Rami Malek as a computer tech for the CIA. When his wife dies during a terrorist attack, he uses his unique set of skills to find who did it and blackmails the CIA into training him to kill all the people responsible. His trainers are Laurence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal.

Are you looking forward to Alien: Romulus? What do you think of the footage description that came out of CinemaCon? Let us know by leaving a comment below.