10 Movies You Had No Idea Joss Whedon Worked On

With the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon could show that he could write a kick-ass female lead, and this is one of the reasons he was involved with the script for the fourth Alien movie. Whedon had written a 30-page treatment for film in early development, and wanted to focus on a new female hero, but Fox were worried that viewers wouldn't want to watch an Alien movie without Sigourney Weaver returning as Ripley.

As a result, Whedon ended up working on a film that was very different to what he originally intended, and as well as several draft scripts, he actually wrote five endings for the movie, but there was a lot of back and forth and disagreements about how the story should come to a close. Unsurprisingly, the resulting film was quite a mess and wasn't released to rave reviews when it came out in 1997.

Although he secured a writing credit on a movie that belonged to a hugely popular franchise, Whedon considers his work on this film less than a success and doesn't hold it in high regard. Nevertheless, his work on such a huge franchise helped boost him into bigger and better things.