Alien: Romulus will feature a nod to 2014's survival horror game Alien: Isolation. Director Fede Alvarez recently said that Creative Assembly's game taught him a lot about horror, and he's paying homage to the game with a small easter egg in Alien: Romulus.
“The film is set up in a way [that] “Every time something bad is about to happen, you’ll see a phone,” he said on the Inside Total Film podcast. “In the game, every time you knew there was a phone, you were like, ‘Holy crap, I’m about to go into a bad scene.’ It’s the same thing here. You’ll see them strategically placed throughout the movie. When you see the phone, it’s like, ‘Brace yourself for impact.’”
Alvarez went on to say that Alien: Isolation was an experience that “made me see that Alien could be really terrifying and well done.” [today]” . “
“I thought, ‘Holy shit, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with this creature and these environments.’ I was playing and I realized how terrifying Alien could be if you did it in that tone,” he said.
Alien: Romulus will be released on August 16th. It is billed as a film that takes the series “back to its roots.” A team of space colonists are searching an abandoned space station when they encounter the big bad Xenomorph. The film stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.
Ridley Scott, who directed the original Alien film, is a producer on Alien: Romulus.