An old Aliens urban legend was finally confirmed as true by director James Cameron. Speaking with Cinemablend recently Cameron admitted that this old urban legend was actually true., The story went that during Cameron’s pitch for Aliens. he had the word Alien on a board. Cameron then adds the s to the end for the title and draws two lines to turn it into a dollar sign. The studio is sold and greenlights Aliens on the spot. Simple and effective, its that other movie, but there’s more than one, and this will make millions. He was of course right, and it turns out this is pretty much exactly how it went down.
“Yeah, it’s true. It just popped into my mind in the moment. It was actually on the back of a script, or some kind of presentation document. Might’ve been the treatment. I can’t remember, I was sitting with the three producers, and we were in the office of the then-head of 20th Century Fox. I said, ‘Guys, I got an idea for the title. And it goes like this.’ And I wrote, ‘Alien’ in large block letters. And I put an S on the end. I showed it to them. I said, ‘I want to call it Aliens, because we’re not dealing with one. Now we’re dealing with an army, and that’s the big distinction.”
“It’s very simple and very graphic.’ And I said, ‘But here’s what it’s going to translate to.’ And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. And that was my pitch. And apparently it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it.”
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Cameron went on to say that whilst you have to be a bit cheeky on Hollywood, the best time is when no one knows who you are.
“There’s a time in your career to be cheeky. Technically in Hollywood, that’s all the time. But I mean, there’s a time to be exceptionally cheeky, which is when they don’t know who you are yet. There’s this constant din and pressure of people wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard, wanting to be hired, wanting to be trusted in. Sometimes, you have to do kind of slightly outrageous things. But do it with a kind of a twinkle in your eye. And I think they respect that, because it makes them think about how they got where they are.”
However the point is Cameron had to back that pitch up by producing a movie. What he made was considered by many one of the greatest sequels ever made. I cannot deny, as much as I love Alien, I simply love Aliens even more. Plus, best sequel title of all time on my opinion, and now we know where it came from.
The old Aliens urban legend was finally confirmed as true by director James Cameron. What do you think of Cameron’s comments? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t like Aliens? Thoughts below.
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