William Gibson’s ‘Alien 3’ Script Brought to Life Through Comics

By Ellis Clopton

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Despite never making it to the silver screen, cyberpunk fiction pioneer William Gibson’s unproduced “Alien 3” is finally seeing the light, with a comic book adaption.

Published by Dark Horse Comics, Gibson’s original late 1980s vision of the franchise’s xenomorph nightmare has been resurrected thanks to the panels from “Angel Catbird”  artist Johnnie Christmas and “Doom Patrol’s” colorist Tamra Bonvillain.

Gibson’s action-heavy script was inspired by and takes place directly after the events of “Aliens,” where Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop are captured by a group called the Union of Progressive People and are taken to a space station called Anchorpoint. After discovering the U.P.P. and the franchise’s shifty corporation, Weyland-Yutani, are running a secret arms race to develop an army of bloodthirsty xenomorphs, the station is overrun.

The Cold War-style thriller script dissatisfied producers, and Gibson eventually abandoned the project after being asked to do rewrites after a writer’s strike while he was in the middle of working on other projects.

Despite being David Fincher’s feature directorial debut, the freshman director was forced to initially shoot the movie without a completed script, and with $7 million of the film’s budget already in the hole from the beginning. It eventually released in 1992 to negative reception from critics and fans alike. Fincher eventually disowned the film, stating that no one hated the movie more than he did.

Gibson eventually posted a link to his Twitter in 2013 to his original draft, which got far better reception from various fan forums across the internet.

Running for five issues, “William Gibson’s 3’s” will be available nationwide on Nov. 7, and is currently available for preorder.