Ridley Scott was extremely relieved when he first watched Alien: Romulus

In choosing Álvarez to take over the franchise, Scott pointed to his previous work, which includes Evil dead and Don’t breathe — and emphasized, “Don’t give it a start because you’ll get eaten alive by the studio… people have no idea what it’s like to be a director starting your first movie with everyone telling you what to do. Talk about too many cooks in the kitchen, you’re kidding me, and you have to actually say, “Stay back.”

Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu star in the film, which follows a group of young space colonizers who come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

About taking over the franchise, Álvarez said: “Foreign it’s always been the scariest movie ever for me, so to be able to go into that world and bring it to a new generation and bring it to life in a way it’s never been brought to life before and in -so realistic and almost documentary really, it was the stuff that gave me all the nightmares.”