Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez and screenwriter Rodo Sayagues screened their film “Alien: Romulus,” the latest film in the “Alien” series, which spans nearly 50 years, at Norris Cinema Theatre. They followed the screening by doing an hour-long Q&A, answering questions from moderator Alessandro Ago — the School of Cinematic Arts’s director of programming and special projects — and students in the audience.

“Alien: Romulus,” as the seventh installment in the “Alien” series and the fifth project to have a different director, had to balance being its own unique project and respecting the tradition that comes before it, Álvarez said. As a fan of the series, Álvarez said that when he was handed the film, it felt like the “movie gods” told him to show how he would tell the story.

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

“It’s quite intimidating, but part of the spiritual aspect was to embrace all the work of these fantastic filmmakers — the best when it comes to the genre — that are working today,” Álvarez said. “It was a love letter to all of those. I tried to tip my hat as a director and both of us as writers to all of the work of all those masters.”

It was partly in trying to honor this tradition that the duo even landed the film, Álvarez said. In fact, no one had ever approached them about making the movie; they just found themselves lucky enough to pitch the movie idea to a producer of “Alien: Covenant” (2017).

“It became a pitch from my desire as a fan of ‘What’s the movie I wanted to see?’” Álvarez said. “[The producer] said, ‘Do you mind writing a page of that?’ … Three years later, 20th Century [Studios] caught wind of that story that I had once pitched an ‘Alien’ movie … They said write it, direct it, and here we are.”

One of the most gratifying parts of making a film that has so much history to lean on is that the past films allowed the filmmakers to incorporate and improve upon ideas

“That’s the privilege of making this movie 45 years later, you have all these experiments, all these masters tried all these things, and we can look back and go, ‘That worked, that didn’t work,’” Álvarez said.

Álvarez wanted to revisit many of the designs that weren’t allowed at the time due to their more explicit nature. He was inspired by the art of H.R. Giger and his original depictions of genitalia everywhere in the first film.

“The thing on the wall, that has been called many things already. On set we called it ‘space vag,’” Álvarez said. “It was based on a design that [Giger] had that he couldn’t use on the first film. Originally, the eggs on the first film were supposed to have this vagina on top of it, that at the time, Fox was like ‘No fucking way’ to the studio.”

Sayagues revealed that the origins of the film’s monster, the Offspring, came long before “Alien: Romulus” was even an idea. Sayagues was inspired by Ridley Scott’s decision to cast a random tall man in a bar to play the Xenomorph in “Alien” (1979).

“His name is Robert Bobroczkyi. He’s from Romania, and I had seen a video on YouTube four or five years ago, of this really tall guy, very skinny, here in the [United States] at some university, trying to play basketball, but he really couldn’t because he couldn’t build enough muscle,” Sayagues said. “I was like ‘Dude, let’s find this guy and put him in a Hollywood movie.’”

Álvarez is always seeking pushback from the studio — that’s how he feels he’s done a good job, he said. If the studio is fine with everything he’s written, then he’s failed to write anything shocking.

“I want you to be there witnessing something that you can say, ‘I have never seen this in my fucking life,’” Álvarez said. “That’s hard for any movie. It’s really hard to do that, to come up with ideas that, as you watch them, regardless if it hits you or not, you can say ‘I’ve never seen that in my life.’”

Olive Kimbrell, a sophomore majoring in film and television production, who attended the Q&A and had the opportunity to ask Álvarez and Sayagues a question, said that events like these were among the most alluring things about USC.

“They’re able to bring actual filmmakers in,” Kimbrell said. “That was absolutely wild. I loved it, I loved the opportunity to ask questions, and honestly just listen to other people’s questions.”

Luke Dorado, a sophomore majoring in film and television production, finds events like these to be a rewarding way of learning.

“It’s one thing to go to your classes and learn things from your professors, which half the time they also have great expertise from the professional field, but it’s another thing to interact with filmmakers who are doing it now, and especially with screenings like these,” Dorado said. “You get to see their work, and then you get a chance to ask [them] about it.”