20th Century Fox
Many fans of the “Alien” movies will tell you that James Cameron’s shoot-’em-up “Aliens” is the best one. Ridley Scott’s 1979 original was a horror movie about ill-prepared miners having to evade the murderous impulses of a human-sized cockroach-like space monster that had infiltrated their ship. Cameron’s 1986 sequel, meanwhile, pivoted genres, becoming an action picture about marines who infiltrated a human colony infested with hundreds of the same creatures.
Those (like me) who prefer horror movies to action movies, and felt that the Alien Queen was a mark of the franchise’s downturn, might be upset by the pivot, but Cameron’s rock-n-roll approach to “Alien” was a giant success; “Aliens” made over $183 million on an $18.5 million budget. It also turned the series’ lead character, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from a resolute survivor into an action heroine. “Aliens” ended with Ripley fighting the dragon-sized xenomorph queen while wearing an outsized mechanical loading suit. It’s not scary, but many would say that it’s cool.
In a video interview with GQ from 2022, Cameron talked about the inception and execution of “Aliens,” and recalled having to make a bluff with 20th Century Fox over the casting of Weaver. It seems that the studio lied to Cameron about Weaver’s contract, saying to Cameron that she had an option in her “Alien” contract to appear in a sequel. She didn’t, however. It’s hard to say why, but Fox intentionally misled Cameron, perhaps intending to trap him into making “Aliens,” with or without Weaver. Cameron wanted Weaver at the center of his movie, however, and threatened to quit the gig and/or rewrite the movie if Fox didn’t get Weaver back on board ASAP.
Cameron confessed that it was a bluff.
James Cameron had to bluff Fox to get Sigourney Weaver for Aliens
20th Century Fox
Cameron admitted that “Aliens” seemed like a bad career choice at the time. He was just coming off the success of 1984’s “The Terminator,” and a sequel to another person’s movie seemed ill-advised. Friends warned Cameron that if “Aliens” was a success, they would chalk it up to the popularity of the Ripley character, and if it was a bomb, they would pin it on Cameron directly. It seemed like a lose-lose scenario for a director who was trying to establish his cred. “You’re probably right,” Cameron said to these hypothetical doubters, “and that’s very logical, but I just dig it and I want to do it.”
He also noted, though, that he was put in a very awkward position of having to contact Weaver directly:
“The only variable for me was Sigourney. Getting her into it. ‘Cause they assured me that they had her on, under an option for a sequel. […] So, I went off and wrote this thing. Okay, I’m going to get to work with Sigourney. This will be cool. […] I come back, and, lo and behold, no option. They haven’t even talked to her. So now it’s up to me to land Sigourney! […] And I don’t know her from a stranger on the street.”
Cameron says he called her up, sent her a script, and eventually met with her. Cameron admits to being nervous about meeting Weaver, because she had the power to shut down his entire movie, if she didn’t like the script. Luckily, she did, and was really taken by the story. Cameron recalls, though, that Weaver’s agents “asked for the moon” … and that her high price forced 20th Century Fox to say “no way.”
Luckily, Sigourney Weaver was into Aliens
20th Century Fox
Cameron was at an impasse. It was here that he decided to bluff and threaten to walk off the project if Weaver wasn’t involved. He said:
“That’s when Gale and I said, ‘Okay, f*** all y’all, we’re going to get married in Hawai’i, and it’s all off.’ And we just walked away. And they said, ‘Wait a minute, did they just walk away? They can’t do that!’ But you can! This is just movies. How movies happen and don’t happen.”
Gale, of course, is Gale Anne Hurd, Cameron’s second wife.
Cameron said that he embellished and pivoted on his bluff by calling up Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent, a guy named Lou Pitt, and announced very confidently that he liked his script for “Aliens,” and that he wasn’t yet willing to give up on it. He said he loved the entire world of space marines and action-packed gun battles that he had written, so he could easily rewrite it without Sigourney Weaver and retain his pride as an author.
Why did he tell Lou Pitt all this? Because Cameron happened to know that he worked at the same agency as Sigourney Weaver’s agent, and that he intentionally seeded this rumor — that he was going to rewrite “Aliens” — to get the information across the hallway, as it were. Cameron had no intention, none, of rewriting “Aliens” without the Ellen Ripley character. The bluff worked. Sigourney’s agent panicked and bent over backward to get Weaver signed. “Guess what?” Cameron said, “The deal was done in 12 hours. […] Sigourney got her million bucks and everyone was happy.”
Of course, shooting the film was hell, but “Aliens” has huge fans to this day.