Michael Biehn, the star of films such as ALIENSÂ and THE TERMINATOR, visited Film & Comic Con Glasgow last weekend. The actor spent all day talking to fans, signing autographs, and having photographs taken. He also took time out to speak to Film and TV Now about his current and upcoming projects and what he thought of the convention.
You could tell there was a lot of excitement surrounding Michael Biehn‘s attendance. The vast majority of cosplayers were dressed as colonial marines and Xenomorphs. He sat at his desk all day signing autographs, only getting up to give a 30-minute talk in front of a huge audience about his career and letting fans ask questions, and to go for his photo-shoot with more fans. Despite this busy and tiresome schedule, he was kind enough to speak to us.
Lately, he and his wife Jennifer Blanc (who was also at Film & Comic Con Glasgow) have been working on their production company Blanc Biehn Productions. Michael spoke about how well their projects were doing:
“We’ve sold three movies and we are in the process of finishing off about six other movies that are in post-production. It’s really kind of Jennifer’s deal, I made the first one, The Victim, I shot that in 12 days compared to The Terminator, that was shot in 12 weeks. $100,000 we spent on it compared to six million, so it was a real cheap movie to make and it was a lot of work, but I had a lot of fun making it.”
He and his wife have a lot of future projects to busy themselves with, but they love it:
“I get to make the decisions on who’s casting them, who’s going to direct them, what music we are going to use, if it is something I don’t like I can say ‘listen, let’s get rid of this.’ So I’m in total charge of it, it’s like being the head of a little studio, it’s a lot of fun.”
Of course, the question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Michael will star in Neill Blomkamp’s ALIENSÂ sequel. He was asked questions relative to this many times throughout his Q&A with fans and we had to ask him about it too:
“I talked to Neill, I told him that it’s an itch I have been waiting to scratch for 25 years.”
He is already very passionate about this opportunity and is excited about the potential of portraying Corporal Hicks again. He was very open about his distaste for the films after ALIENSÂ and was glad to hear they were being made redundant in terms of the franchise:
“They’re going to act like none of them have ever existed and they’re just going to pick up the movie with us coming back.”
Because there are still a lot of rumours surrounding this new film and despite the fact that director Neill Blomkamp’s initial concept art does include Michael at his current age with the scars he received at the end of ALIENS, Michael is still uncertain of his role:
“I talked to Neill but I’m not officially part of it yet. I’d be surprised if they killed us off again, but you never know.”
Some of Michael Biehn’s career highlights have been in the James Cameron films THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, and THE ABYSS. He is still friends with the director and still keeps in regular contact with him, but explained why he was noticeably absent from Avatar, even though he was tipped to be the antagonist:
“Originally, I was up for the Stephen Lang role…He said ‘you know Michael, the thing is now that we’ve got Sigourney in it, if we put you in it, it is going to kind of remind people of Aliens.’ It was a disappointment, but at the same time too, I understood it and Jim has been instrumental to say the least in making my career what it has been.”
Michael seemed completely devoted to his fans whilst at Film & Comic Con Glasgow. He did not even take a break for lunch and spent the entire day answering questions from fans. His film career has been non-stop for years now, even though he has not appeared in a mainstream film for quite a while. However, he has a dedicated fan base who are obviously very excited about the potential of a new Aliens film with their favourite characters reunited at last.
