Alien + 40 by Egantx7

The origins of Alien are generally cited as this 1974 film which started as a USC student production by John Carpenter with help from Dan O'Bannon, and then grew out of control into a feature film. In this film, O'Bannon used an inflatable ball for an alien, but it got him wishing he could make a film with a much better creature down the road. Name this sci-fi comedy film with the tagline, named for a scout ship which serves as the film's setting.

O'Bannon's next work ended up bankrupting him as he went to Europe to collaborate with acclaimed director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who was trying to adapt this 1965 novel into a film. This novel won the first Nebula Award for Best Novel. Identify this novel which was was adapted into a 2000 miniseries by John Harrison and a 1984 feature film by David Lynch.

One of the individuals whom O'Bannon met while working with Jadorowsky was this artist who was doing concept drawings for the ultimately failed film. This now-late artist has a museum bar in Gruyères, Switzerland which might be the most metal dwelling space in human history. Identify this Swiss surrealist known for his highly sexualized biomechanical art who used his own artwork, Necronom IV, as the basis for creating the title creature in Alien.

After the Jadorowsky project failed, O'Bannon was broke and homeless and moved in with Ronald Shusett. The pair scraped together enough money to buy the rights to a short story "We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale", from its author, Philip K. Dick. The pair wrote a script, but unable to find backers, saw the script float around for 10 years until Paul Verhoeven got control. Identify this 1990 film which took over a decade to make, and its inability to be produced saw the pair turn to writing Alien instead.

When O'Bannon and Shusett completed their initial screenplay for Alien, one of the first people they showed it to was this guy, who was impressed and started formulating a deal to get the script. Fortunately, Star Wars came out, and suddenly big studios were wiling to spend money on science fiction. This guy would go on to make the Star Wars ripoff Battle Beyond the Stars, but will likely be best remembered for co-writing and directing Little Shop of Horrors, which he short in under 3 days. Identify this multi-talented filmmaker best known for making films on shoestring budgets and very fast.

In an interview, this man said that working on Alien was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had in this profession. When this man was hired to compose the score for the film, editor Terry Rawlings scored the film with a temp track from this man's score to the John Huston film Freud ... and ended up using quite a bit of the music from that film. This man would get 18 Oscar nominations (including for Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown,and Star Trek: The Motion Picture), but only won one for his work on The Omen. Identify this prolific composer some of whose musical cues were used for Alien, but some of which were dropped entirely.

What TWO letters precede the numbers "426" and "223" as the alphanumeric names of the planets that were the settings for Alien/Aliens and Prometheus?

Three of the ships used in the franchise: Nostromo, Narcissus, and Sulaco all take their names from the literature of which Polish born, British author of Heart of Darkness?

The 1979 Saturn Awards saw Alien easily win the trophies for "Best Science Fiction Film" and "Best Director". While Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress, she did not win (losing to Mary Steenburgen for her work in Time After Time). This actress, however, did win the Best Supporting Actress Award. As a young girl, this woman played Cathy Brenner in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and the year before had played Jeff Goldblum's wife in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Identify this woman, older sister to Angela, hired to play the role of Ripley, only to learn she would be playing Lambert at her first costume fitting.

Within 2 years, how many years was Ripley cryogenically asleep between the events of Alien and Aliens? In the special edition of the film, we learn that her daughter, Amanda "Amy", had died two years before Ripley is found, and that Ripley had promised to be home for her 11th birthday.

While never on screen, in various other media, the xenomorph has been given two different binomial Latin specific names:Internecivus raptus and Linguafoeda acheronsis. Either translate:

Internecivus raptus into English (I'll be liberal on this),

OR

identify the organ of the creature's body being referenced in the name Linguafoeda acheronsis.

Thanks to Prometheus, we know that the alien pilot whose crashed spacecraft is discovered in Alien is called an "Engineer". While never named as such in the film, what two-word term was used in other media, including in the director's commentary, to name the giant race which crashed the derelict spacecraft discovered in Alien ... a two-word term suggesting that the pilot might be running horses in a celestial derby.