SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains potential spoilers for Xtro 4. Proceed at your own risk.
If you’re a horror fan, you’ll know about Xtro. A British sci-fi horror film made on a budget of a million dollars back in 1982, it was a surprise underground hit despite the fact it garnered a bunch of negative reviews from critics. About an alien abduction, in which the man in question is ‘reborn’ on Earth when a visiting alien-human hybrid impregnates a woman who proceeds to give birth to the fully grown man, the film was full of nuts imagery. Including a life-size Action Man figure who comes to life and goes on a murderous rampage.
The film generated two lesser sequels, the first of which featured 80s’ star and Airwolf actor, Jan Michael Vincent. With the original recently released on Limited Collectors Edition Blu-Ray in response to a resurgence in popularity as a younger generation have discovered its bonkers joys, the film is, however, finally set to get another sequel. And it sounds as though it could potentially be as insane as the first.
FANDOM spoke to producer Mark Forstater (Xtro, Monty Python and the Holy Grail), about the plans for Xtro 4. Here’s what he revealed.
There’s an Earthquake and a Really Old Buried Spaceship
“We have a script. Xtro: The Big One. Which is about an earthquake, a big earthquake that devastates Los Angeles. It’s caused by an alien spaceship which has been buried in the desert outside LA for millennia and it [happens] when it rises up, this earthquake. It’s about a group of teenagers and their parents who are trying to get to safety in the midst of this really strange, let’s say what Donald Trump would call ‘carnage’ taking place in Los Angeles. In fact, maybe we should call this film Xtro: Carnage.”
Not Xtro: Covfefe?
“You know what film distributors are like, you make a film called Xtro: Covfefe and they say well you can’t call a film Covfefe, nobody would know what Covfefe means. But Carnage would be quite good, actually, because there’s a lot of carnage going on in Los Angeles after this earthquake. That’s what the kids have to get around, and keep safe and all the rest of it.”
Going Beyond Sci-Fi and Horror
“We have some really good scenes. Now we know what ‘Xtro’ is. Xtro needs weirdness, so we’ve got a few things that are very, very strange but we’re also trying to tell a human story, a personal story. I think we can do it better than the original because we all have a lot more experience making films. So, I think Xtro 4 will be, should be, a film that could go beyond the sci-fi and horror audience and really be a crossover film. That’s what we’d like to see happen. Not just make some small movie, because you really can’t make an earthquake movie that’s small. It has to have some scale to it and therefore it should be a mainstream film. So that’s our plan.”
The Creature Will Be Mo-Cap
“We have to have an Xtro [creature in it]. Not the same creature [as in the original film] but a creature in that spaceship who is the creature that people will be expecting to see. To do it, we have to do motion capture, and that’s expensive so we have to have a reasonable budget.”
An America’s Got Talent Contestant Could Play the Creature
“A contortionist in Toronto, a guy called Troy James, he’s an amazing contortionist. From standing to being flat on the ground is like that [snaps fingers]. This man, his limbs and his joints must be made of jelly. Because he can move in ways that no one can move. He’s triple-jointed or something. So I was saying to [director] Harry [Davenport], this is the guy we have to get into motion capture and then we can make him a creature who will move unlike anything else that’s ever been created. Because it’s real and yet… He’s been in a couple of horror movies where he’s played creatures. The Void [is one].”
There Are Parallels With The Original
“By making the controller of the spaceship a creature, that’s one of the connections I wanted to make. And the leading character in the film is a 16-year-old girl, Jodie. The things that she goes through, although they’re not at all related to what Maryam d’Abo’s character went through in Xtro, there is a kind of resemblance as someone who is being overtaken by alien feelings and thoughts and influences and is forced to act against their own nature. Someone who has been altered. So in that way, it has a family resemblance, but it’s not very direct.”
The Alien Is Tinkering With DNA
“The spaceship has been there since way before there were people. And it’s testing creatures. And one of the creatures it tests is this 8-year-old girl, Jodie. And that’s what changes her. You could say the aliens are playing around with the DNA of the creatures; they’re altering the DNA. So Jodie is altered. So, by the time she’s 16/17, she’s a very angry young girl. And she doesn’t know why. As things go on, she discovers that actually, without knowing it, she can do things like kill people without realizing she’s doing it. So she has these powers that she gains during this period. And then she eventually gets to the spaceship because they want her on board because they’ve altered her, and then the ending is remarkable.”
The Aliens Have Built a Barrier Around Earth
“[Xtro 4] takes place in the future but, like, tomorrow. It’s when this earthquake hits and everything turns into chaos. Teenagers in LA, their parents all have to figure out ‘How do we meet up now?’ Communication gets screwed up, transportation is gone, weird people come out — very weird people come out. At the same time, the aliens are emerging from the earth. They’ve built a kind of barrier around the earth, a metal barrier which is meant to keep everyone in. And everyone out.”
Xtro is available on Limited Collectors Edition Blu-Ray now.