INTERVIEW: Fede Alvarez Talks New Alien: Romulus VHS Release and Teases Sequel Plans

BM: So many people see their favorite films for the first time on VHS or on television, so I wanted to ask you what movie did you discover you loved through watching it at home for the first time?

FA: So many. It started with the original Alien and Aliens. Most of all my favorite movies. Back to the Future, definitely. It was my favorite movies I saw on VHS at home. I saw part two in theaters, but part one in ‘86 I didn't get it in theaters. At that time I was seven years old. But I watched it on VHS and loved it. There are definitely ways to experience movies at home for the first time that stay with you forever. That's no question. I think usually what that does though is, even when you discover them at home, you wish you would have seen them in theaters. I wish I would have seen Back to the Future in theaters on opening night. Or Alien or Aliens. But the next best thing is to definitely have a copy of the movie and watch it at home.

BM: You then get that reward one day when it returns to the theater and you can go back and watch it and experience it for the first time all over again. I wonder, however, if there's going to be a vice versa for people watching Alien: Romulus on VHS for the first time and then discovering that they love it that way.

FA: I certainly hope so. Maybe my concern with everything that is digital media these days is just streaming and services. Like I am always concerned… Humanity has been through this process in the past when suddenly something happens, like either a big company goes bankrupt and the servers get destroyed and no one wants to pay for things anymore and those movies disappear. It has happened already pre-VHS actually, when movies were in theaters. After they were not in theaters anymore, they disappear and you never see them again. Many movies disappear forever because unless they were a classic, they were not stored and saved so they died. Many movies that were made just completely disappeared. There's no copies of it. So, a lot of my filmmaker friends – and particularly the ones that made a lot of movies for streaming – they always have this paranoia that the one day those servers are gonna get shut down, there's gonna be a massive hack and all those movies that are only on servers will disappear. So, to put them on physical media it's a way to make sure we preserve them. That will make sure that if the servers get shut down, at least we have the VHS copy. It has a magnetic tape. It has a very specific technology. Alongside 35MM prints, but even the 35MM prints can have a shorter lifetime.

BM: They're so fragile. It’s important that we preserve the movies that we make.

FA: Make sure you have it in a way that is not just digital.

BM: So much amazing craftsmanship went into this film. On the physical copies there are going to be all these great bonus features. What are you most excited for audiences to see on there?

FA: There are a lot of great featurettes that the studio put together behind the scenes that show even more. I think some people think they know how practical we went, but I don't think they do. Once they see behind the scenes they'll see how many things are actually practical. With the offspring, it wasn't until I posted the behind-the-scenes of that people realized that's actually a person. A lot of people were convinced – because he's so uncanny – that he was a CG character. So I can't wait for people to see some of the tricks and how much of what they see on camera is actually real; the sets that we built, and all the incredible stunts that the stunt team put together. It’s really worth it just to see all the magic behind the movie-making. There’s some extended scenes, too. That is always interesting. There's no deleted scenes because, more and more, I try to never have a deleted scene because it’s so painful. Particularly because of budget. You don't want to spend three days shooting a scene that’s not gonna be in the movie, right? I really try to be as effective as I can on the storytelling part on the script’s level to make sure that what we shoot is gonna be in the movie. The scenes do get shorter sometimes when you feel like, ‘OK, wait, this could be shorter.’ It doesn't have to be that long to be more effective. So there are extended versions of scenes. I think there's a couple of scenes that we changed eventually, so there's alternate/odd versions of scenes. It also looks gorgeous. Particularly the Blu-Ray, that's always my favorite. I'm a physical media person. So, if I really love a movie, I always go get the Blu-Ray and I get that version of it just to get all the details of it.

BM: I have to wrap up but it was teased last month that you're gonna stay around the Alien universe for a little bit longer. What can you say anything yet about a sequel or what's to come from this story?

FA: The good news I think now with a sequel is that we can go into uncharted waters, right? I think in Romulus, the intention was to bring all the best aspects of the franchise together in one movie. The best ideas. The best concepts. The best scenarios and scenes that happened in the past, to bring them together in a new movie with new ones. But I think, now that we've done all that, wherever we go should be completely new ground. And that's exciting for me. To sit down, in front of an Alien movie without knowing where it's gonna go and the horrors that we’re gonna discover knowing that they're gonna be all new? I think there's something truly exciting about that.

BM: I look forward to seeing it.