Xenomorph that scored the franchise's biggest bodycount.
Alien 3 was David Fincher's feature film debut, but it was such an awful experience he has since disowned the sequel. Audiences who were expecting the visceral thrills of Aliens were stunned by the film's unrelentingly bleak tone also, in addition to the controversial call to kill Hicks and Newt. Alien 3 received mixed reviews and was a financial letdown but in the decades since its release, it has gathered a fanbase because of the bold swings it took. It was a long road to the Alien 3 that hit theaters, though the DNA of what it became can be found in its various rejected drafts.
1 William Gibson's Alien III
William Gibson is the author of formative cyberpunk novels such as Neuromancer, so when franchise producers David Giler and Walter Hill needed a fresh take for Alien 3, he was their first call. When Gibson's first concept for a Xenomorph running loose in a Blade Runner-style city was rejected, his script instead placed Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop on a space station. An alien egg grew inside Bishop's torso after the Alien Queen ripped him in half in the previous movie, and experiments into the virus he was infected with soon lead to the creation of Alien-Xeno hybrids that overtake the station.
Sigourney Weaver's participation was far from certain for this version of Alien III, so Ripley is reduced to a cameo and has little to do. Instead, Michael Biehn's Hicks and Lance Henriksen's Bishop take center stage. Gibson wrote two very different drafts. The first was an all-out action movie with the virus creating dozens of Xenomorph variants, while his second draft reduced that number to three. It featured some impressive setpieces too, including a body horror nightmare where an infected human morphs into an alien onscreen, and a zero-gravity spacewalk finale.
An early idea was for Hicks to front Alien III and Ripley to retake the lead for Alien IV, and the producers wanted the third entry to be a Ridley Scott movie and James Cameron to helm the fourth. Gibson's screenplays also ended with the tease that part four would take the fight to the Alien homeworld. Ultimately, the producers felt Gibson's work wasn't unique enough, and its Cold War subtext would date it badly in the years ahead. That's why Gibson's script was dropped, though the idea of a Xenovirus that can reprogram human DNA was later reused for Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
2 Eric Red's Alien III / Alien World
Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) was the first director to sign up, though his first two ideas were swiftly knocked down. He either wanted to explore the Alien homeworld or bring the creature to Earth, but the producers didn't like either pitch. Instead, they developed a new take from Near Dark writer Eric Red, which took place on a space station that was designed to resemble an American town. This is home to a military base that recovers the Sulaco, but in a shocking twist, it opens with the reveal that Ripley, Hicks, et al. were killed offscreen and turned into alien eggs.
The new lead is Marine Sam Smith, who uncovers military experiments on the Xenovirus. Long story short, the virus breaks free and dooms the population instead, with the virus proving so potent it finally transforms the structure itself into a giant Xenomorph. Red's hyper gory Alien III is filled with bizarre sequences, including an alien farm filled with Xenomorph hybrids born of chickens and cats and a chainsaw fight between Sam's mother and an attacking Star Beast. It's a notoriously poorly-written screenplay that was slapped together fast and rejected the moment it was handed in, with Weaver herself later dubbing it “Absolutely dreadful" in interviews.
3 David Twohy's Alien III
Red's Alien III was likely penned to underline to Weaver (and her agents) that Ripley could be replaced, but killing key characters offscreen was the only real concept that the final film retained. The next writer was David Twohy (Pitch Black) whose story took place on a prison planet. It featured no returning characters from past the Weyland-Yutani corporation is secretly using prisoners as test subjects to create Xenomorphs with new abilities. This includes one that can bleed acid and another that can squeeze into tight spaces.
Strangely, Twohy's Alien III feels more invested in the prison break aspect than the Alien one. His draft would have made for a decent horror flick, but it wasn't special or unique enough to become the third Alien. The main protagonist Styles does feel like a Riddick prototype though, and some ideas from this pitch - like glowworms being used to light a dark area - made their way into Pitch Black. Twohy eventually quit the project when he learned the producers were working on a totally different Alien 3 screenplay with Vincent Ward without informing him.
4 Vincent Ward's Alien 3
Somewhere between Twohy and Ward's pitches, Harlin quit Alien 3 to make Die Hard 2: Die Harder instead. By the time Ward was hired to write and direct, the project had spent years in development with nothing but a bin full of discarded ideas to show for it. It was at this time that Fox insisted Weaver was brought back, as it was felt Ripley was the icon of the saga. Ward's utterly bizarre Alien 3 pitch took place on a wooden planet named Arceon, which was run by a group of monks who reject futuristic technology.
Soon, Ripley's escape pod crashes on Arceon, with her being the only survivor of the Sulaco. An alien also came down with Ripley, with the monks dubbing the creature "The Devil." It soon rips through this medieval world, and the monks blame Ripley for bringing this evil with her and lock her away in the planet's lower depths. She befriends a nice monk who helps her escape while the beast kills everyone else, including a show-stopping hunt through a cornfield. The creature got some upgrades too, including the ability to implant embryos without an egg.
One condition for Weaver's return was that she wanted Ripley to die. After destroying the beast in a similar fashion to the final version of Alien 3, she walks into the burning cornfield while the nice monk escapes on a pod. Fox and the producers were so impressed with this premise that they greenlit it and started building sets. However, concern over the wooden planet and other story issues reared their head, and Ward walked when he was told to rewrite the setting to a prison planet instead. The resulting Alien 3 largely pulled from Ward and Twohy's concepts - which is one reason the sequel is so disted.
