CAMERON, James.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Aliens, original screenplay. Final draft of the screenplay for James Cameron's Aliens (1986), dated September 23, 1985, one week before principal photography began at Pinewood studios. This was the sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien in 1979, and the director's first film after Terminator (1984). Cameron took Scott's claustrophobic space horror and moved the franchise in a new direction, styling his sequel as a fully fledged action adventure. The screenplay is celebrated for foregrounding Ripley and expanding upon her character. Cameron said to Sigourney Weaver in a recent interview with Empire magazine, "I had been writing for months with your picture up on the wall right in front of my little writing station. I was desperately trying to channel what you and Ridley had created for Ripley, and extrapolate forward with my own posttraumatic-stress-syndrome-motif... Ripley had to hold the centre of the film." Cameron also made his usual leaps and bounds with special effects, for which the film won an Academy Award.Twentieth Century Fox pitched an idea to Cameron that they called "Ripley with soldiers". They picked the young screenwriter on the strength of his original screenplay for Terminator, which they read before the film had been produced.

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