Urban legend has it that Michael Biehn, who plays the role of Hicks in James Cameron’s Aliens , was actually paid more not to appear in the sequel to the film.
However, this is not accurate.
When David Fincher began working on Alien 3 , Michael Biehn found out he wasn’t going to be part of the cast. And he was very disappointed.
He then learned by chance, from the producer of a film in which he played, that the Alien 3 team had made a bust in his likeness, using an old cast of his face made for Aliens .
David Fincher’s idea was to have Hicks’ character die at the beginning of the film by having an Alien pop out of his chest while he was hibernating in the spaceship.
Biehn was furious when he discovered this.
He immediately called his agent, who called the film’s producers to tell them that they had no right to use Michael Biehn’s image in this way. And it was true. The law had recently changed: it was no longer possible to use an actor’s image like that without his consent.
In the process, David Fincher called Michael Biehn to try to find a solution.
Here’s how the conversation went according to the comedian:
“Fincher said to me, ‘Please, we’d really like to use your character. Can’t we find a way to…’
I interrupted him abruptly. I told him, ‘First of all, fuck you for not putting me in your film.
Second, fuck you for having the nerve to call me that.’ I was really, really angry. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have talked to him like that, because, well, he became David Fincher afterwards! But I continued. I told him , ‘And thirdly, fuck you for making my character die like that!’
So, they abandoned the idea of making an Alien come out of my chest. But then they came back with another idea. They said to me: ‘ We want to use your photo.’ I said ‘OK, but it’s going to cost you…’
So, they paid me a lot of money to be able to put my photo in this film!
But in the end, it remains a bad memory for me. I could have acted in this film and the following ones, and made a lot of money in the process.”
Here is the photo of Michael Biehn used in the film:
Not sure it was worth “a lot of money”…