Alien was released in the US on 25 May 1979.
While working on Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s ill-fated adaptation of Dune, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon met H. R. Giger and began working with Ronald Shusett on a script to match Giger’s artwork. The script went through numerous rewrites and languished at a number of studios until the success of Star Wars led to a rush to capitalize on the revitalized science-fiction genre.
Alien was a commercial and critical success, earning more than $100 million at the box office (20th Century Fox studio famously claimed that the film, made for a budget of $10 million, lost money until a lawsuit forced them to readjust their accounting) and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction. It received the Oscar for Best Visual Effects (NIck Allder, Dennys Ayling, H.R. Giger, Brian Johnson, and Carlo Rambaldi).
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