ALF creator Paul Fusco wants to bring the cat-eating alien to the big screen

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ALF creator Paul Fusco wants to bring the cat-eating alien to the big screen

In the 1980s, ALF was a pretty big deal for a few years, doing well on TV and appearing on lunchboxes, sticker books… fucking everywhere. So that would have been a good time for an ALF movie. But now, ALF creator Paul Fusco wants to see his cat-eating alien come to the big screen in the 21st century.

“When I used to write an episode and couldn’t come up with a line for ALF, I needed something really funny, I would actually ask ALF,” Fusco explains during a wide-ranging conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “I would actually put the character on, and the character would just tell me what the line was.”

Think of it as serious method acting. He isn’t crazy, and at the end of the day, he doesn’t really think ALF is an actual living, carbon-based organism; he’s more an untapped, polar-opposite extension of Fusco’s mild-mannered self. But after 30 years with the puppet — and nearly 26 since their sitcom ALF launched on NBC — ALF is as much friend as he is career-maker, and that dedication soon might pay off once again.

So, with ’80s nostalgia (and property recycling) at its height — Transformers will continue to substitute CGI for plot, while The Muppets have been rebooted, Jonah Hill made 21 Jump Street a comedy, TNT thinks we need more Dallas, and Alvin and the Chipmunks and The Smurfs are big-money children’s film franchises — where is ALF?

Fusco has worked for years to re-launch the brand — with varying levels of success — and he’s spent months fine-tuning his latest effort: In a few weeks, Fusco will be pitching an ALF feature film to a major studio. Should it get the greenlight, it will cap one of the more circuitous pop culture stories of the past 30 years.

Via