As eagle eyed readers may remember, in the trailer for Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands released back in May, it looked like the Prey filmmaker was teeing up a potential Predator/Alien crossover with some distinctive Weyland-Yutani logos on prominent display. Now, with the official full trailer for Disney+ and FX's upcoming Alien prequel series Alien: Earth, it seems creator Noah Hawley is sowing some stream-crossing seeds of his own. Just check out the trailer for the Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, and Timothy Olyphant led show below and see what we mean;
"This ship collected five different life forms," says Babou Ceesay's Morrow mid-way through this fresh trailer for Alien: Earth, which deals with the crash-landing of research vessel USCSS Maginot on — you guessed it! — Earth. And while several blink-and-you'll-miss-'em glimpses of chestbursters, face huggers, and good ol' fashioned xenomorph nasties in this atmospheric appetite whetter account for one life form from "the darkest corners of the universe", that still leaves four for Chandler's Wendy and her tactical unit to discover. Here's the thing, though: while we don't see a Yautja anywhere here, there's certainly a few instances of suspicious chittering/clicking that don't dissuade some dot-connecting for fans who know their genre monsters. And if you need any more persuading to tinfoil your hat, then the specific and incredibly pointed use of the term 'predatory' should do it...
Theories aside though, here's the actual synopsis for the series: "In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named ‘Wendy’ (Sydney Chandler) marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, Wendy and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined."
So there's five organisms — perfect or otherwise — loose on Earth, and we reckon we've got a pretty solid hunch what at least two of them could be. What extraterrestrial terrors await when Wendy and her team find the other three? How will Hawley's show tie in to Sir Ridley Scott's extant prequels Covenant and Prometheus? Are the events of this series going to take us right up to Ripley and the crew of the USCSS Nostromo's ill-fated expedition? And could we actually, seriously, finally be on track to get the Alien Vs. Predator face-off we truly deserve? We'll find out the answers to at least some of these questions when Alien: Earth makes its (hopefully-not-crash-)landing on Disney+ on 13 August.