James Cameron was told ALIENS was a ‘non-win’ for him and a ‘career end’

James Cameron’S aliens it was such a badass movie! It was the first R-rated movie my dad took me to as a kid, and I loved every damn second of that movie! It turns out some Hollywood producers didn’t have faith in Cameron. Indeed, a producer told him that the film was a “win” for him and that the film was a “career-ending.”

In a recent interview with Empire, Cameron was asked if he had any hesitations when it came to making a sequel to Ridley Scott’S Alienand while he wasn’t concerned, some people were. cameron said:

“I had lunch with a top producer when I was starting Aliens who said, ‘This is a bust for you. If your movie is good, Ridley will get the credit. If it’s bad, it’s you. It’s a career end.’ I said, ‘Yeah, buuuuuut… I like it.’ I was maybe a dumb fanboy, but I could see it so clearly in my head that I just had to go and do it.

The director then went on to talk about how he pitched the title for the sequel during a meeting with the studio head and various executive producers. This is a story he’s told before, but it’s fun to remember!

“I was in a meeting with the studio head and the executive producers, and I flipped my script and on the blank side of the last page I wrote Alien. Then I drew an S at the end. I then drew two vertical lines across the S and lifted it up to show. Perhaps it was just Pavlovian conditioning when they saw the $ sign closely connected to the word Alien. Or maybe it was the confidence I projected. But they said yes.”

He previously added this insight into how this story continued to unfold:

I showed it to him. I said, ‘I want to call it Aliens because we’re not dealing with one. Now we’re dealing with an army, and that’s the big difference. And it’s very simple and very graphic.’ I said, “But here’s what it’s going to result in.” And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. That was my speech. And apparently, it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it.

So while there was one producer who didn’t think Cameron would benefit from making this film, there were people at the studio who put their full trust in him, and he managed to make something incredibly special and awesome!