James Cameron could never make another movie and he’d still be considered one of the greatest filmmakers to have ever lived. He’s already reached an apex that will likely remain untapped for the rest of our lives. The filmmaker’s confidence is unparalleled and with that comes a handful of myths that only amplify his mystique. One such story has just been confirmed by the man himself.
The story goes something like this: Cameron, the young filmmaker hot off The Terminator, was called in to pitch a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Standing in front of a room of FOX executives, he scribbled “Aliens” on a board and then added two lines, transforming the “S” into a money symbol. It’s a badass tale that’s never been confirmed, until now.
“Yeah, it’s true. It just popped into my mind in the moment,” Cameron confirms to CinemaBlend, further detailing the factual version of the story.
“It was actually on the back of a script,” he reveals, “or some kind of presentation document. It might’ve been the treatment. I can’t remember.
“I was sitting with the three producers, and we were in the office of the then-head of 20th Century Fox. And I said, ‘Guys, I got an idea for the title. And it goes like this.’ And I wrote, ‘Alien’ in large block letters. And I put an S on the end. I showed it to them. 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 distinction. And it’s very simple and very graphic.’ And I said, ‘But here’s what it’s going to translate to.’ And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. And that was my pitch. And apparently, it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it.”
The rest is history. Aliens would eventually gross approximately $300M at the box office (when adjusted for inflation), sitting right alongside Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece.
Next up, Cameron hopes to do the same with his several Avatar sequels…