Murray Close/20th Century Studios
"Alien: Romulus" director Fede Álvarez said he had to battle with Disney executives to make sure the movie ended how he wanted it to.
Disney pushed back against a disturbing scene toward the end of the film, he said — prompting a clash over how to close the movie.
Álvarez described the dispute in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. He told the outlet he saw it as his duty as a horror director to insist.
Representatives for Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The film, which takes place after "Alien," follows a group of young scavengers who break into an abandoned space station to steal equipment to escape from a hellish mining colony.
Once inside, they discover that the corporation that owns the station has experimented on the Xenomorphs, and they have to fight to survive. At the end of "Alien: Romulus," Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is forced to fight a monstrous new creature called the "Offspring" — the sequence Álvarez says prompted the showdown.
"So when I get pushback, that's really when I go, 'Okay, that's good. We're on track. The studio is pushing back on it,'" he said.
Per Álvarez, Disney's discomfort was not "because they didn't like it" but thought it might be "too much."
"'And I was like, 'Yeah, now that you said that we shouldn't, I know that I will,'" Álvarez continued.
"If you're given an 'Alien' movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
The gruesome ending generated plenty of discussion among fans, who reacted to the intensity of the sequence.
Álvarez's confidence in the film's final act also paid off at the box office: "Alien: Romulus" raked in $108 million worldwide in its opening weekend, according to Forbes, and also made more ticket sales than "Deadpool & Wolverine" in the US.
It'll be some time before we know just how much the film will make in its theatrical run. But it's looking like another solid win for Disney, having already brought in more than its $80 million budget, according to Collider.
