What to know
Alien was written by Dan O’Bannon from a story he devised with Ronald Shusett. The producers Gordon Carroll, David Giler and Walter Hill made it through their company Brandywine Productions, and 20th Century-Fox distributed it; Giler and Hill revised and added to the script. Jerry Goldsmith composed the music.
It was filmed over 14 weeks, from 5 July to 21 October 1978, mainly at Shepperton Studios near London, while the models and miniatures were shot at Bray Studios. More than 200 craftspeople built the three principal sets: the surface of the planetoid and the interiors of the Nostromo and of the derelict alien ship. The cast were not told the details of the scene in which the creature bursts from Kane’s chest; it was shot in one take with four cameras, so Veronica Cartwright’s reaction is real. Four identical cats played Jones.
In 2003 Scott prepared a Director’s Cut: it restores about four minutes of deleted footage and drops about five, so it is roughly a minute shorter than the theatrical cut. Next, watch James Cameron’s Aliens (1986); Alien: Romulus (2024) is set between the two films.
