TCTTS said:
Nichols wrote a draft of A Quiet Place: Day One for Paramount, but ended up dropping out due to creative differences. And while it sounds like pieces of that draft made it into the final product, Paramount owns his draft either way, so Nichols can't use anything from it here.
That said, I listened to a podcast interview with Nichols last month for The Bikeriders and he said before that project he had been developing an original sci-fi/alien movie for a couple years, when 20th Century Fox asked if he wanted to write/direct a remake of the old Alien Nation series on Fox, but as a movie. He eventually agreed, melded his original idea with that IP, and the project was pretty far into development when Fox was bought by Disney, and Disney axed it. They told him they already had Star Wars and Alien now and didn't need another alien project.
So, the current speculation is that Nichols has decoupled his old, original sci-fi/alien idea from the Alien Nation IP, and is moving forward with his original plan from way back when, with Brad Pitt attached.
This may be dumb, but Star Trek could also work for this. A post Zefrem Cochran warp drive test story with Earth grappling with meeting aliens (Vulcans) for the first time.
