“That’s actually the script that it is,” Nichols said, and he went on to explain how the project evolved in the years since Disney buying Fox:
“The way that the ‘Alien Nation’ thing came about is they called and were like, ‘Hey, do you want to remake this?’ I was like, ‘Look, I’m a fan of the original film, but no, I don’t believe in remakes.’ Like, why? I said, ‘But I have this original idea. Would you all like to hear it?’ And they really liked that idea, and they were like, ‘Can we put that title on there?’ ‘Sure, I don’t care. Give me a hundred million dollars, you can put any title you want on it.’ [laughs] And then of course, the Fox/Disney merger happened, and Disney didn’t want to move forward with it, and we were able to get it over to Paramount without that title. So it is really this one project that I’ve just been working on for years and years and years, and I still really love it.”
“Alien Nation” was set in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, when a spaceship carrying 300,000 extra-terrestrial refugees lands on Earth. After spending three years in quarantine, the so-called “Newcomers” start integrating into our world, getting traditional jobs and interacting with human society. Mandy Patinkin played the L.A.P.D.’s first alien cop, who is partnered up with a specist cop (James Caan) who doesn’t like the idea of aliens spending time with humans. Nichols has said that his version would not have been a typical remake, but he did say there would be aliens involved, so presumably this newly untitled story will still give him the chance to weigh in on vital topics like refugees, immigration, and xenophobia in that unique, personal, tactile, and distinctively Southern Jeff Nichols way.
You can listen to my whole interview with him on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast:
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