The Chestburster Scene In Alien’s Script Convinced Ridley Scott To Hop In The Director’s Chair

After the smashing 1977 success of “Star Wars,” Hollywood executives realized the commercial potential of the science fiction genre.

This afforded opportunities to the few writers who had science fiction scripts ready, some of whom had had trouble getting their movies made before the new sci-fi craze.

This included Dan O’Bannon’s script for “Alien,” which studios finally took seriously after George Lucas’ worldwide phenomenon took off.”They wanted to follow through on ‘Star Wars’ and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was ‘Alien,’” said O’Bannon in “The Beast Within: The Making of Alien.”Finally having been given the green light to make his movie, O’Bannon needed a director.

This also proved difficult, as the script was light on character development and heavy on action and violence.

That was until he brought in British director Ridley Scott.At that point in his career,

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