'Alien: Earth' Pulls Massive Numbers Despite Mixed Fan Reception

Have you been watching Alien: Earth? What do you think so far? Variety has just reported some pretty stunning numbers from the show's premiere.

It might be too early to tell the series' direction, with just the first two episodes dropping on Tuesday, August 12th, but the show seems to have created some division between critics and audiences. Critics are loving it with a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while fans are more lukewarm at 72%.

Either way, the show pulled in some serious numbers right out of the gate, racking up 9.2 million views worldwide in its first six days on streaming platforms. That's a pretty impressive debut for the franchise's first foray into television.

Those numbers come from Hulu and Disney+ viewership, calculated by dividing total streaming time by the episode's runtime. The series also airs on FX's traditional channel, where the actual viewership is likely even higher when you factor in those viewers.

For a franchise that's been seen only on the silver screen, those are the kind of numbers that can get studio executives excited.

I'm a longtime fan of the franchise and am cautiously optimistic. The worldbuilding was fairly heavy in the show's openers, so now that's out of the way, I'm hoping we can focus on characters and action. Tell me more about Timothy Olyphant's synthetic character, please.

Alien: Earth is set two years before the original Alien film, following the trend established by Alien: Romulus to explore stories immediately around the first 1979 film. In this entry, it's 2120, when corporate titan Prodigy unlocks the secret to human consciousness transfer, creating the first hybrid robot-human. A catastrophic spaceship crash brings something far deadlier than anyone imagined to Earth.

Sydney Chandler leads the cast as Wendy. Also starring are Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson, David Rysdahl, Essie Davis, Lily Newmark, Erana James, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Kit Young, Diêm Camille, Moe Bar-El, and Sandra Yi Sencindiver.

Noah Hawley serves as showrunner and executive producer along with Ridley Scott.