Fang Zei said:
Heh, totally forgot this was (originally) about to come out. Ridley Scott doing the intro had really piqued my interest. I didn't know Roger Christian worked on Alien until just now, none. Brian Johnson, one of Alien's sfx people, co-supervised the vfx of Empire with Richard Edlund (he brings it up in the dvd making-of).
There are also connections between the unfilmed Dune (developed by director Alejandro Jodorowsky), Star Wars and Alien...
The project was sabotaged in Hollywood. It was French and not American. Its message was not "enough Hollywood". There were intrigues, plundering. The story-board circulated among all the large studios. Later, the visual aspect of Star Wars resembled our style. To make Alien, they invited Moebius, Foss, Giger, O'Bannon, etc. The project announced to American the possibility of carrying out science fiction films to large spectacle and out of the scientific rigour of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Dune project changed our life. When it was over, O'Bannon entered a psychiatric hospital. Afterwards, he returned to the fight with rage and wrote twelve scripts which were refused. The thirteenth one was Alien.