The Alien franchise has come a long way since its relatively small 1979 origin, and now it looks like a new stand-alone movie in the franchise is coming courtesy of Don’t Breathe filmmaker Fede Alvarez. According to sources, the new movie will not be connected to either the upcoming TV series or the previous movies in the Alien franchise, although Ridley Scott will be on board to produce the new movie, which is said to have been picked up by 20th Century Studios “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch.”

The Hollywood Reporter revealed the news on the project, which is thought to be forming part of 20th Century Studios plans to produce 10 movies a year for the Disney-owed Hulu platform. This would be the first feature film based on the Xenomorphs since Disney bought out Fox, who owned the rights to the franchise. While the Disney deal struck fear into the hearts of many fans of the once R-rated movie series, news that it will be Hulu bound should at least settle some fears that the film will be pulled down to a PG-13 rating.

Over 40 years the Alien franchise has spawned three direct sequels, two cross-over movies with the Predator franchise, and two prequel movies that have continued to build on the story of a race of vicious creatures that employ “facehuggers” to implant their embryos into living hosts who then “give birth” to the new alien through their chest, which obviously doesn’t end well for the host.

Related: What Could We Expect from an Alien TV Show?

The Alien Franchise Is Clearly On Disney’s Radar As A Big IP For The Future

aliens - 1986
Image via 20th Century Fox

The Disney/Fox merger created an uncertain time for many “adult themed” franchises that were previously owned by Fox. However, in the grand scheme of things, Disney have their family friendly output and they also have an entertainment stream for other content on Hulu in the U.S. and on Star via Disney+ internationally, with both platforms requiring new and engaging content to keep subscriber numbers up. For this reason, it is really in the interest of Disney to keep their best known IPs alive, and that means delivering what audiences want in a franchise, even if that means making it R-rated.

There is currently nothing known about the new Alien movie, but sources have said that Alvarez has been working on the idea for a long while. According to the report, the filmmaker has always been a huge fan of the franchise and pitched his Alien idea to Ridley Scott years ago. Last year it seems that Scott decided to call up Alvarez and ask if he still wanted to make the movie. 20th Century president Steve Asbell said, “It was just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”

This is not the first old franchise that Alvarez has attempted to make his mark on, having already written and directed the 2013 Evil Dead remake and co-wrote and produced Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. While the latter of these didn’t quite hit the mark with many, it will be interesting to see what he can do with the Alien franchise by keeping it mostly separate from the rest of the series.