An alien Invasion is coming to Apple TV+. The original sci-fi series, which will launch with its first three episodes beginning Friday, Oct. 22, follows several characters scattered across the world in the midst of an alien invasion. As they go about their day-to-day lives, they suddenly find their entire world turned upside down by mysterious -- and extraterrestrial -- circumstances, which upend their families, their beliefs and their view of humanity at large.
Speaking to CBR, Invasion creator and longtime X-Men producer Simon Kinberg explained what sets his series apart from other alien invasion stories. He shared how classic sci-fi like War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Lost inspired his approach to the show and why he needed his characters to be more important than the sci-fi elements. He also recalled working with astrophysicists and NASA scientists to truly nail the "unknowability" of alien life, reflected on his work with the X-Men franchise and more.
CBR: These days, it is so rare to see an original series with this kind of funding. What do you think it is about Invasion that invited that kind of confidence from Apple?
Simon Kinberg: First of all, I really appreciate that. I think it's true, and it was definitely the intention to create something really original in a space that's been well-traveled. There's been plenty of alien stories, and specifically, even alien invasion stories, but I wanted to do something completely out of the box and crazy in terms of both it being global and also it being so character-first and character-centered and emotional and dramatic. I mean, when I went into Apple, I was like, "I want to make War of the Worlds meets Babel."
The answer to why Apple said yes is I don't know! They might be crazy! At every step of the way, when I was like, "This is gonna be too bold for Apple," they were like, "No, this is exactly what we want. We want it to be bold." They pushed me in terms of character. They pushed me in terms of the boldness and the originality. So they were incredible partners.
If I were to try to figure it out, other than, like, I just think they're cool and they want to do cool stuff, it may be that in a world where there's 75 billion things on television, you need to be bold and original to stand out -- unless you're a massive IP! The Star Wars and Marvel shows do very well, right? But if you're Apple and you don't have Star Wars and Marvel, you've got to do some cool, fresh, different stuff and take some big bets, and this shows a big bet in the sense of it's doing some surprising things and is not a cheap show to make.
Tell me a little more about where this idea came from. You mentioned War or the Worlds, but I'd like to hear more about your specific inspirations for this project.
The aspect of the alien invasion for it came second for me. I really wanted to tell a science fiction story and I didn't know what science fiction story yet, but I work in science fiction. I mean, you know I work in science fiction a lot and it's genre I've always loved -- my favorite genre. So I wanted to tell a science-fiction story that was global, was ensemble and I really wanted to work in long-form storytelling television. I wanted to be able to tell a story that was 10 hours long at the very least, and hopefully longer if all goes well with this season.
So it began there, and then I was thinking, "Okay, well, what is a global event that would unite the world?" There's a lot of options there! They made two movies about an asteroid that was gonna hit the Earth. But pretty quickly, because I did love the book War of the Worlds -- I'm obsessed with the radio play by Orson Welles, I liked [Steve] Spielberg's movie a great deal, and then I also have loved lots of others -- I gravitated very quickly toward, "Okay, an alien invasion is a global event."
Specific movies or shows that influenced Invasion, I would say Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a big one, even though it's a single perspective. I loved how small and character and complex and mysterious it was. I loved the mystery of Close Encounters, as opposed to like showing, like, "Ah! The alien ships!" or blowing up landmarks and they're running amok in the streets. I was just really interested in the leaning-in mystery, the slowburn of Close Encounters, and the surprising choice that Richard Dreyfus makes at the end.
A show that I think about a lot with this show is Lost, because you really care about those characters largely because of the flashbacks of who they were before the crash, and then you really care about the mystery of the show because you're leaning in, being like, "I never thought I would care so much about opening a hatch." So that's the patient minutiae of that and the way that it really gripped an entire world when that show came out. Those are two things that were touchstones for me making the show.
How did you set out to balance the character drama with the sci-fi elements? How did you find the true heart of the series?
Well, I think the heart of it was always the characters for me. So I wanted to make sure that the character stories, the crises that they were going through, their dramas were interesting enough that if it was just This Is Us with these characters you would be watching it.
Then I wanted the problem is in their lives to be such that when the alien invasion happens, this massive global trauma, it's like a magnifying glass on all of their problems, and it can expose those problems and help them deal with them, or it can burn them up and destroy them and the people around them. So I just kept thinking the alien invasion is an accelerant to the little fires I've started with these characters. If the alien invasion ever becomes so overwhelming that it's not actually moving the characters in a direction other than just making them run away, if it's not moving them in an emotional direction. I'm not doing a good job with the alien story.
In terms of the mystery of the alien story, I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of specialists, astrophysicists, people who work at NASA, amazing, brilliant minds -- way, way, way, way more brilliant than mine; I don't know anything, anything about science -- and they talked a lot about the unknowability of what aliens would be like. So I really held onto that, and I was like, "I want to tease out this mystery so that there's just enough that you're leaning forward, and that our characters are leaning forward, but not too much that you're ahead of the characters."
Before I let you go, I have to bring up the X-Men, for which you were a producer for quite some time. Now that the property is at Disney and gearing up to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is that a world you can see yourself revisiting? What would be your greatest hope for these characters moving forward?
I mean, you know I love the characters. I love the comics. I adore [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige. I adore what he's done. I'm such an admirer of what he's done with the MCU. I would always be open to working on it, because I love the characters so much.
But there's also a part of me that feels like I'm really interested to see what they will do with it, to make it different if I'm not a part of it, or even if I am a part of it, because it's a little bit like -- not to sound bombastic, but it's a little bit like Shakespeare, where a million people have played Hamlet. There's been tons of fascinating versions of Hamlet. I myself started with the original X-Men cast and then went into the First Class cast and then put them together in a movie and split them back up again and did something very different with Logan than what we were doing with Wolverine and the X-Men mainline franchise. So there's just so many different ways you can go tonally and cast-wise.
I'm excited to see what they do. I don't have any hopes for what they do. I know it's gonna be cool because everything they do is cool and smart and really well thought-out. As a fan of the comics and as a fan of Marvel movies, I literally can't wait. So yeah, I'd certainly be open to being involved. If not, will be first in line and wildly excited to see what they do.
Invasion premieres Friday, Oct. 22 on Apple TV+.