When you think of the original 1979 Alien, what comes to mind?
For us, it’s the steam-filled hallways and flashing lights, the overwhelming sense of dread and isolation overlayed with Mother’s ominous voice; the heart-pounding few moments when Kane falls to the floor in convulsions; Ridley’s fighting spirit and our singular desperation for her to survive. Alien has left such a distinct mark on our collective imagination that it’s difficult to measure just how influential it’s been, not just for the sci-fi horror genre, but across cinema.
To celebrate the franchise’s 40th anniversary, 20th Century Fox teamed up with Tongal to launch the Alien 40th Anniversary Shorts Project, giving filmmakers the opportunity to pitch entirely new original short films based on the distinctive world of the 1979 Alien. In a span of one week, we received over 550 pitches, more than any other production project on Tongal to date, and ultimately greenlit 6 filmmakers to produce their original shorts, providing them with a budget of $35,000 each.
After months of meticulous planning and production, the films are finally here! Each one is a testament to the kind of magic made only by talented and resourceful film crews. Since screening at Emerald City Comic Con and WonderCon, fans have been fawning over each of the shorts’ authenticity and what they add to the story world of the original.
Starting on March 31st, IGN began releasing one Alien short a week on their digital network, and to coincide with this release schedule, we’ll be publishing one interview a week with one of our 6 Alien filmmakers. Because our Alien filmmakers are busy traveling the con circuit and attending screenings, we decided to do a rapid-fire format, limiting ourselves to 3 questions per interview. The first one out of the gate is director Chris Reading’s short, Alien: Containment. We had a chance to interview Chris Reading after a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles for a screening on Fox’s studio lot.
Maddie Mindling: With over 550 Pitch Qualifications submitted, the Alien 40th Anniversary Shorts Project was the most competitive filmmaking project on Tongal to date. How did it feel when you learned you were one of the 6 filmmakers that got the greenlight from 20th Century Fox?
Chris Reading: I had pitched for projects on Tongal before, so I knew how competitive it could be when pitching against other Tongalers. We also had the added competition of all the Alien fanatics who had come out to pitch for this, too! We didn’t expect to win at all, but we put everything we could into our script and treatment, and when I learned we had gotten the greenlight from Fox, I told everyone I had ever met.
MM: Your final scene during the credits took a tonal turn into comedic territory. Was that always how you envisioned ending it or did that come later in the process?
CR: Our little post-credits scene was not planned at all, it was improvised on-set. Adam Loxley who plays the unconscious man has a lot of comedy experience so I knew he could get a dark laugh from the audience using just his face. Only later in the post phase did we offer up this sequence to Fox as an option. They loved it.
MM: For this project, you were required to provide an outline of your script in the Pitch Phase. Did you team up with a screenwriter or did you write the script yourself?
CR: I wrote the script myself, however, I was able to bounce ideas off people during the process. Patch Ward, our producer, was an excellent sounding board as was Quaid, our producer at Tongal. We went through many script revisions before production. I wanted to be as economical with the story as possible; if it wasn’t serving a purpose, we cut it.
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See more behind-the-scenes action on Instagram at @chrisjreading and @alienanthology, and be sure to keep your eyes glued to IGN where new Alien 40th anniversary short films will be released every week leading up to Alien Day on April 26th.
