Light spoilers below for those who haven't watched the first couple of episodes of Peacock's Teacup, so be warned!
Halloween is a great time of year for networks and streaming services to showcase new horror TV shows , and Peacock is delivering a double dose of genre offerings via the satanic panic horror-comedy Hysteria and the "townspeople facing a unique and dangerous threat" sci-fi horror Teacup. It's a book-to-TV adaptation based in part on Robert R. McCammon's 1988 novel Stinger, and doesn't take long before its overarching threat is introduced, along with a mysterious gas-masked man who seems to know more than others about what's happening.
As it comes to be known, the deadly threat facing Grey's Anatomy heartthrob Scott Speedman and Dexter fave Yvonne Strahovski's Chenoweth family is not of Earthly origin. So even though this series is already known to be based in part on a pre-existing novel, it's probably not a surprise to learn that the all-time great horror movie sequel Aliens also played an inpirational role. Just probably not how you'd expect.
Speaking at a Q&A following Teacup's world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024, the cast members and creator Ian McCulloch addressed a question about their own personal horror fandom, and which projects may have been influential for this production. And it's here where the showrunner addressed how Aliens impacted the Peacock series' story, while first joking about his lack of interest in horror.
Yeah, I'm not a fan. [Laughs.] No,, I'm a fan. This series — this isn't really a spoiler — but the entire season takes place over 48 hours, and with that in mind, the episodes hover somewhere around a half an hour. So it was all about keeping the pace going, and the movie Aliens is an example where it just never lets up. And that was the goal throughout the series. So I thought about that quite a lot when writing.
Just when you thought McCulloch might just also jokingly fall back on stating the obvious by saying, "Yeah, Aliens inspired my aliens," he lays out a legitimate alternate explanation that also serves as a good push to get someone to watch the show. Half-hour genre shows with propulsive plots and limited timelines? That's an extremely rare TV commodity, and is kind of the polar opposite of the entire Alien franchise as a whole.
Amusingly enough, Scott Speedman answered next, and joked as if he was only vaguely aware that a sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien existed.
- SCOTT SPEEDMAN: Aliens or Alien?
- IAN MCCULLOCH: Aliens.
- SPEEDMAN: Aliens. Cameron. I like The Shining a lot. I love Alien a lot, too.
- MCCULLOCH: You should see the second one.
- SPEEDMAN: Second one's good?
- MCCULLOCH: Yeah.
The story for these tortured Texan townspeople ratcheted up a notch or two in the third and fourth episodes, and I can only imagine how much worse things could get for everyone when the next two episodes drop. Here's hoping the pacing does indeed match up with the epic action of James Cameron's sequel.
Ian McCulloch also addressed that Teacup isn't just an Under the Dome retread, either, and there technically isn't a dome or a teacup barrier involved with this series, for the sake of not just retreading story ground. But I also can't imagine Stephen King would let anyone else adapt that book after the awful CBS series, which King himself also disliked.
New episodes of Teacup are available to stream every Thursday morning with a Peacock subscription. By the time the finale comes around, if Maggie and James end up taking off and nuking the area from orbit, it'll be clear they've gone way too far with the Aliens inpirations.
