Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. It follows a commercial starship crew who investigate a derelict space vessel and are hunted by a deadly extraterrestrial creature. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions and was distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The alien creatures and environments were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while the concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the other sets.
Alien premiered on May 24, 1979 at the fourth Seattle International Film Festival. It received a wide release on June 22 and was released on September 6 in the United Kingdom. It initially received mixed reviews, but won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, three Saturn Awards (Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright), and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Alien grossed $78.9 million in the United States and £7.8 million in the United Kingdom during its first theatrical run. Its worldwide gross has been estimated at between $109 million and $188 million.
In subsequent years, Alien was critically reassessed and described as one of the greatest and most influential science fiction and horror films of all time. In 2002, Alien was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2008, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre, and as the 33rd-greatest film of all time by Empire. The success of Alien spawned a media franchise of films, books, video games, and toys, and propelled Weaver's acting career. The story of her character's encounters with the alien creatures became the thematic and narrative core of the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). A crossover with the Predator franchise produced the Alien vs. Predator films, while a two-film prequel series was directed by Scott before Alien: Romulus (2024), a standalone sequel, was released. A television prequel written by Noah Hawley and produced by Scott, Alien: Earth, was released on FX on Hulu on August 12, 2025.
Plot
The commercial space tug Nostromo is returning to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: captain Dallas, executive officer Kane, warrant officer Ripley, navigator Lambert, science officer Ash, and engineers Parker and Brett, along with the ship's cat, Jones. The ship's computer, "Mother", detects a transmission from a nearby exomoon and wakes the crew. Following company policy to investigate transmissions indicating intelligent life, they leave their payload in orbit and land on the surface, but the ship is damaged. Dallas, Kane, and Lambert discover that the transmission comes from a derelict alien vessel. Inside is a giant, fossilized alien corpse with a hole in its torso. Meanwhile, Mother partially deciphers the transmission, which Ripley determines is a warning beacon and not an SOS as initially thought.
Kane enters a chamber containing hundreds of large eggs. When he touches one, an arthropod-like life form springs out, penetrates his helmet, and attaches to his face. Back at the Nostromo, Ripley refuses to allow them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash disobeys her. While the engineers work on ship repairs, Ash attempts to extricate the creature from Kane's face but stops when he discovers that its highly corrosive acidic blood could harm Kane and damage the ship's hull. The creature eventually detaches itself and dies. After the crew returns to space, Kane awakens and seems well. During a final crew meal before returning to stasis, he suddenly chokes and convulses as a small alien creature bursts from his chest and escapes into the ship.
After ejecting Kane's body into space, the crew uses tracking devices to try to locate and kill the creature. Encountering Jones, Brett follows him into a landing leg compartment, where the now fully-grown alien kills him. The crew determines that the alien is moving around the ship within the air ducts, and Dallas devises a plan to force the creature off the ship with an airlock. Dallas asks Mother about alternative methods of killing the alien and their chances of succeeding, but the computer refuses to answer. He then enters the ducts with a flamethrower but is ambushed and killed by the alien.
A panic-stricken Lambert suggests abandoning the Nostromo and leaving in the ship's escape shuttle. Ripley, now in command, rejects the plan because the shuttle cannot support the remaining four crew members and decides that they will reattempt Dallas's plan. She accesses Mother herself and discovers a secret company directive: Ash must return with the alien for study, regardless of risk to the crew. Ash attempts to kill her when confronted, but Parker arrives and incapacitates Ash, who is revealed to be an android. Upon interrogation, Ash admires the alien and claims that the crew stands no chance against it. Parker incinerates Ash's remains.
Hearing this, Ripley decides to proceed with Lambert's plan and initiate the Nostromo self-destruct mechanism. While they are gathering supplies, the alien kills Parker and Lambert. Now alone, Ripley begins the self-destruction, but the alien blocks her route to the escape shuttle. She narrowly escapes and turns back to abort the sequence but fails to return before the override option expires. With only five minutes left to evacuate, Ripley frantically returns to the shuttle and finds that the alien is gone. She takes Jones, boards the shuttle and launches it seconds before the Nostromo explodes.
As Ripley prepares for stasis, she discovers that the alien has stowed itself in a narrow compartment aboard the shuttle. She dons a spacesuit, loads a grappling hook gun, and straps herself to a chair before discharging gases to drive the alien from its hiding place. It tries to attack her, but she opens the shuttle door. The resulting depressurization blast leaves the alien clinging to the door frame. Ripley shoots it with the gun, knocking it out, but the door closes on the grapple line, leaving the alien tethered to the ship. She then fires the engines to sever the line and blast the alien into space. After recording her log entry, she places Jones and herself into stasis to start their return journey to Earth.
Cast
Tom Skerritt as Dallas, captain of the Nostromo. Skerritt had been approached early in the film's development, but declined as it did not yet have a director and had a very low budget. Later, when Scott was attached as director and the budget had been doubled, Skerritt accepted the role. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the warrant officer aboard the Nostromo. Meryl Streep was considered for the role, but she was not contacted as her partner John Cazale had recently died. Helen Mirren also auditioned. Weaver, who had Broadway experience but was relatively unknown in film, impressed Scott, Giler, and Hill with her audition. She was the last actor to be cast for the film and performed most of her screen tests in-studio as the sets were being built. The role of Ripley was Weaver's first leading role in a motion picture and earned her nominations for a Saturn Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role. Veronica Cartwright as Lambert, the Nostromos navigator. Cartwright had experience in horror and science-fiction films, having acted as a child in The Birds (1963), and more recently in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).Mcintee, 17. She originally read for the role of Ripley and was not informed that she had instead been cast as Lambert until she arrived in London for wardrobe.McIntee, 29–30. She disliked the character's emotional weakness,McIntee, 30. but nevertheless accepted the role: "They convinced me that I was the audience's fears; I was a reflection of what the audience is feeling." Cartwright won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Harry Dean Stanton as Brett, the engineering technician. Stanton's first words to Scott during his audition were, "I don't like sci fi or monster movies". Scott was amused, and convinced Stanton to take the role after reassuring him that Alien would actually be a thriller more akin to Ten Little Indians. John Hurt as Kane, the executive officer who becomes the host for the alien. Hurt was Scott's first choice for the role, but he was contracted on a film in South Africa during Aliens filming dates, so Jon Finch was cast as Kane, instead. However, Finch became ill during the first day of shooting and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which had also exacerbated a case of bronchitis. Hurt was in London by this time, his South African project having fallen through, and he quickly replaced Finch. His performance earned him a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Ian Holm as Ash, the ship's science officer who is revealed to be an android. Yaphet Kotto as Parker, the chief engineer. Kotto was sent a script off the back of his recent success as villain Dr. Kananga in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), and said he rejected a lucrative film offer in the hope of being cast in Alien. Bolaji Badejo as the alien. Badejo, a 26-year-old design student, was discovered in a bar by a member of the casting team, who put him in touch with Scott. Scott believed that Badejo, at — inside the costume — and with a slender frame, could portray the alien and look as if his arms and legs were too long to be real, creating the illusion that a human being could not possibly be inside the costume. Stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell also portrayed the alien in some scenes.McIntee, 30–31. Helen Horton as the voice of Mother, the Nostromo computer.
Production Writing
While studying cinema at the University of Southern California, Dan O'Bannon had made a science-fiction comedy film, Dark Star, with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb, with production beginning in late 1970."Star Beast: Developing the Story", The Beast Within: The Making of Alien. The film featured an alien (created by spray-painting a beach ball and adding rubber "claws"), which was played for the comedic effect. The experience left O'Bannon "really wanting to do an alien that looked real." A "couple of years" later he began work on a similar story that would focus more on horror. "I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts", he later recalled, "Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy." Ronald Shusett, meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become Total Recall. Impressed by Dark Star, he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first, as they believed it would be less costly to produce.
O'Bannon had written 29 pages of a script titled Memory, containing what would become the opening scenes of Alien: a crew of astronauts awakens to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be.