It’s difficult to underestimate HR Giger’s contribution to the success of the first Alien movie. Not just with his designs for the iconic creature, but also with the crashed ship and various other flourishes, he created something that suggested a whole world that could be explored, and which others then played with in the sequels (sometimes with Giger’s help, sometimes without).
Now it seems the 70-year-old is returning to the Alien universe for Ridley Scott’s prequel, which is currently in pre-production. The news comes via his wife, who said on the German TV show Glanz & Gloria (via AVPGalaxy), that her hubby is ‘on-board’ for the new movie. However there’s no more info than that, so Giger could be doing anything from proffering his opinion on other’s designs, to conceptualising and building things as he did for the original film.
It certainly makes sense to get him back – it’ll be his first Alien gig since Alien3 – as the prequel is likely to return to the world Giger created in a more profound way than any of the sequels. For example there’s much talk of the prequel exploring the origins of the ‘spaoce jockey’ a Giger created alien (with a hole blown out of its chest) the crew of the Nostromo discover inside a crashed spaceship. That suggests that not only will there be more Giger-esque creatures, but also more use of the ‘biomechanical’ environments the artist is famed for.