Dan O'Bannon's original Alien screenplay is getting the comic book treatment from Dark Horse Comics. Alien: The Original Screenplay will be made up of five issues by Cristiano Seixas and Guilherme Balbi. In 2018, Dark Horse found success when they released William Gibson's Alien 3, which adapted the original screenplay from David Fincher. Back in 2013, Dark Horse did an eight-issue run for George Lucas' original screenplay for Star Wars, which was also a huge hit.

The original screenplay for Alien includes a lot of differences from what ended up on the big screen. Alien: The Original Screenplay will feature new characters and alternate ship designs while trying to tell Dan O'Bannon's original story. The story was written by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, but it was heavily rewritten by producer Walter Hill, who went uncredited and made drastic changes to the source material, including making Ripley a woman. Dark Horse says the upcoming miniseries is "an alternate line of events."

The first issue of Alien: The Original Screenplay hits newsstands on April 22nd. Judging by a first look at the issue, it will be a dark affair, which suits the storyline of the movie and the screenplay very well. In another change from the big screen adaptation, the beginning of the story features another spaceship that isn't the Nostromo. Instead, it's the Snark. Even with a few preview images, Alien fans should be excited enough to rush out and get the first issue, especially if it's as well done as the Alien 3 adaptation from 2018.

Dan O'Bannon got the idea for what would become Alien while working on the science fiction comedy Dark Star with John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb. They made an alien out of a beach ball, which had O'Bannon thinking about making a movie with a realistic looking alien. Right from the start, the writer knew that he wanted it to take place in space and have big horror influences. O'Bannon started with 29 pages, which was titled Memory, and became the very beginning of the story a crew of astronauts awakens to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid.

Dan O'Bannon took a break from Memory and accepted an offer to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky's ill-fated big screen adaptation of Dune. While the project fell through, it introduced O'Bannon to several artists whose work gave him ideas for Alien, including Chris Foss, H. R. Giger, and Jean "Moebius" Giraud. With creepy designs in place and a story that was billed as "Jaws in space," the script was shopped around and later picked up. The rest is history, but it's nice to know that O'Bannon's original story is getting a great adaptation for hardcore fans of the franchise. The Hollywood Reporter was the first to announce the new Dark Horse Comics series.

Alien Original Script Comic Book Cover
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