FX/Hulu’s Alien: Earth Trailer Brings Back Franchise Horror Vibes

FX and Hulu’s Alien: Earth series has had a long development, but the wait will be over soon. The prequel series premieres August 12, 2025, and the streaming platforms have just released one final trailer. Along with a detailed synopsis, the footage makes the project look both chilling and meditative. Meditative even. The trailer mixes shots that feel existential with the franchise’s typical moments of sci-fi horror. Alien craft drift in space. Cadavers litter darkened hallways. Mucousy creatures writhe. There are flashes of humans covered in gore, trying to flee. It all builds to a distant outline we recognize. It’s a xenomorph, moving in the shadows.

Alien: Earth‘s showrunner, Noah Hawley, has also spoken about the show having a tighter fit with Alien director Ridley Scott’s 1979 original than with subsequent Alien prequels such as Prometheus or Alien: Covenant. The series is set in 2120, only two years before the events of the first movie, and follows a near-future with corporate interests fighting for control of human life, possibly even immortality.

It’s the corporate-dystopian near-future of the Alien: Earth timeline. Specifically, it’s a world where the Earth in the year 2120 is governed not by national or international governments but by five mega-corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. This is the Corporate Era, in which humanity has developed humanoid, cybernetic synthetics controlled by advanced artificial intelligence. And though humanity has long been working with cyborgs—augmented humans with machine parts—the line between human and mechanical beings has blurred more recently with the development of the hybrids.

The hybrids are humanoid robots with actual human consciousness, the creations of the young, brilliant Founder and CEO of the Prodigy Corporation. The company has already raced ahead of the others in the quest for immortality by creating prototypes such as “Wendy,” the series’s central character. Played by Sydney Chandler, Wendy is a humanoid synthetic “robot” with “the body of an adult and the consciousness of a child.”

Proxima in Peace (And Horror) Until an Alien Spaceship Crash

For a time, the hybrids at Prodigy City live in peace. (What’s that other famous sci-fi horror catchphrase?) That is, until a Weyland-Yutani spaceship lands in Prodigy City in a crash. Wendy and other Prodigy hybrids are sent out into the wreckage. There, the hybrids come into contact with unknown alien organisms that are far deadlier than anything humanity has ever seen. These new antagonists prey on the hybrids as humanity must face the terror of these nightmarish creatures all over again.

The star-studded cast for Alien: Earth also includes Timothy Olyphant (as Kirsh, Wendy’s synthetic trainer and teacher), Alex Lawther (soldier CJ), Samuel Blenkin (Boy Kavalier, the calculating CEO of the Prodigy corporation), Essie Davis (Dame Silvia), Adarsh Gourav (Slightly), Kit Young (Tootles), David Rysdahl (Arthur), Babou Ceesay (Morrow), Jonathan Ajayi (Smee), Erana James (Curly), Lily Newmark (Nibs), Diem Camille (Siberian), and Adrian Edmondson (Atom Eins).

Rounding out the Creepy Promotion with Trailers (Teaser and Full Reveal)

In January, FX and Hulu released a short teaser for Alien: Earth to much fanfare. The surprise trailer aired during the NFL’s AFC Championship game. The one-minute clip was shot entirely from the xenomorph’s perspective, revealing it racing through a spaceship corridor as the ship hurtles toward Earth, about to crash into the atmosphere. The eerie, otherworldly point-of-view clip gave little context, but the action was enough to generate buzz.

Then, in July, FX and Hulu released the first full trailer for the show. It opens with Wendy’s creation in 2120 on a Neverland Research Island. Later that year, after an alien spaceship crash-lands on the island, Wendy volunteers to investigate and collect the cargo from the ship. Instead of opportunity, the synthetic finds grisly horror. In the hold of the downed spaceship are five alien life forms—deadly, previously unknown, and unknown species that (true to Alien) get brought back inside a laboratory for study.

Instantly, human curiosity in the name of scientific discovery makes eye contact with a true apex predator. The newly released trailer shows even more from Alien: Earth, a series that doesn’t feel like a huge rush to the spectacle. Hawley has said he wants Alien: Earth to play more like the original film, which means that it will be about building the terror and dread, examining the corporate greed and ambition that typically precede the horror in the franchise.

On August 12, FX and Hulu will give viewers a chance to see for themselves.