Dark Horse Comics is bringing another unused movie screenplay out of the vaults and adapting it into a five-issue comic book mini-series.  Dark Horse’s biggest success at this approach was adapting George Lucas’s original 1974 treatment for Star Wars as The Star Wars, featuring the incredible artwork of Mike Mayhew (reviewed here at borg).  Next up will be Dan O’Bannon’s original screenplay for Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien, which was heavily edited and modified before arriving in its final form for theaters.  It’s arriving with the comic book touch as Alien: The Original Screenplay, in bookstores this summer.

Dan O’Bannon was a bit of a sci-fi writing wunderkind you should be familiar with.  He worked on screenplays for seminal sci-fi films including John Carpenter’s Dark Star, plus Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars, and Total Recall.

Writer Cristiano Seixas and artist Guilherme Balbi created this new version of the film, a non-canon alternate path for fans of the franchise to explore.  The screenwriting process and development of the film can be found in the landmark book, The Making of Alien, reviewed here at borg.  If you want to compare scripts, you can read many Hollywood screenplays at the Daily Script website here, including both the as-filmed Alien script here and the original O’Bannon version being adapted to comic form here.

Dark Horse also previously released an adaptation of William Gibson’s original screenplay for Alien III, an entirely different story than the final director’s cut.

Add Dark Horse Comics’ Alien: The Original Screenplay to your comic store pull list and request a copy of Alien III: The Original Screenplay at Elite Comics or your local comic book shop. It is scheduled to arrive August 5, 2020.

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg