James Cameron played a little mind chess with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent to get Sigourney Weaver signed onto Aliens
James Cameron has carte blanche to do anything he wants nowadays, thanks to two little projects — Titanic and Avatar — which sealed him as a mega filmmaker. However, before he became King of the World, he was quite a problem solver as a director who needed to cut corners to get things accomplished. Cameron solidified his status with The Terminator in 1984, and when he boldly wanted to make a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien with a new vision, he had to rely on some tricks to secure Sigourney Weaver so she could reprise her iconic role as Ripley. Today marks the 39th Anniversary of the legendary sci-fi film, and Entertainment Weekly reports on Cameron’s unorthodox method to sign Weaver onto the film.
Cameron always intended to have Ripley play an integral role, but the studio would lowball Weaver with negotiations. Since the first Alien, she’d become a name star, and with projects like Ghostbusters, she was only rising higher. However, Cameron explains in a 2022 interview that Fox assured him that Weaver was already on board. When he learned that they actually weren’t meeting Weaver’s demands, he knew he had to play a little game to light a fire under everyone.
Luckily, he had a friend in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent, Lou Pitt. Cameron called up Pitt for a dinner since he knew he worked at the same agency that represented Weaver. Cameron told Pitt he would rewrite the movie without Ripley, “We’ve decided that we really like the story and all the Marine Corps characters and the world we’ve created and everything. And really, we’ve thought about it, and we really just don’t need Sigourney. I’ve created all these characters, and my pride of authorship tells me I should go ahead with this, and we’ll just cut her out of it, and we’ll just cut her character out of it. We won’t recast it; I’ll just rewrite it. So, I’m going to start on that tonight.”
Cameron admits he never intended to do the movie without Weaver, but his lie worked. Pitt would go back to his agency and talk with Weaver’s representation. Everyone got the deal done in 12 hours. Weaver got her demands met and would be seen on screen exclaiming, “Get away from her, you b*tch” and history was made.
The Alien series will continue in TV form for the first time with Alien: Earth premiering two of the eight episodes on Tuesday, August 12, at 8 p.m. ET. The series synopsis reads, “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.” During the time the story takes place, five corporations – Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold – wield the power of nations, and proprietary advancements in technology provide the promise of a new tomorrow.
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