Charles Bishop Weyland founded Weyland Industries and was played by Lance Henriksen in Alien vs. Predator. In October 2004 he took a dying expedition under the ice of Bouvetoya after one of his satellites marked a heat bloom two thousand feet down, beneath the abandoned Razorback Point whaling station. Alexa Woods guided the team into the pyramid. Scar killed him on the stairs after Weyland burned the hunter with a vented oxygen tank.
Biography
Earlier Life
In Marc Cerasini's novelization, Charles Bishop Weyland's mother died before he was two. Nannies raised him under a harsh father who did not believe in God. At twenty-one he held a Harvard M.B.A. and a small satellite-mapping company inherited from that father. Two years later he bought a cable franchise in the Midwest and a telecommunications grid in Nevada. Within a decade Weyland Industries was the largest satellite company in the world, worth more than three hundred billion dollars.
The public man opened hotels in San Francisco, Paris, and London, built a casino in Las Vegas, and carried a nine iron on his shoulder for the society pages. The parties were a cover for the buying done out of sight. While he opened the Weyland West Hotel in San Francisco, his staff bought a nanotechnology firm in Silicon Valley. During a London theater season his lawyers closed on a robotics plant in Pittsburgh. During Paris fashion week a shell company took over a pharmaceutical firm in Seattle and bought a genetics lab in Kiyodo. By forty he was the main private backer of that research. The company line was "Expanding the range of human endeavor."
Four years before the Bouvetoya voyage, his plan for Maxwell Stafford was forty more years of research and a company post on the Moon, in the Sea of Tranquility. Doctors then found advanced bronchogenic carcinoma in his lungs, and the time left was closer to forty days than to those forty years. He treated the buried pyramid as the last mark he could leave, and he refused to die in the sickroom fitted out on the icebreaker Piper Maru. On the flight out, Alexa Woods slept under a copy of Scientific American whose cover called him Charles Bishop Weyland, Pioneer of Modern Robotics.
Weyland Finds A Pyramid Under The Ice
A Weyland Industries satellite hunting mineral deposits recorded a heat bloom under Bouvetoya and drew solid walls in the shape of a pyramid, two thousand feet under the ice. The picture placed that structure directly below the abandoned Razorback Point whaling station. Weyland took the find as the discovery he wanted before the cancer finished him. Maxwell Stafford had a few months to gather drillers, mercenaries, and archaeologists and put them on the Piper Maru before another satellite saw the same heat.
Weyland Briefs The Team On The Piper Maru
On the Piper Maru, Weyland took the briefing from Stafford and showed the thermal plates in the hold. Archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa, pulled off a closed dig at Teotihuacan, read the plan as Aztec, Cambodian, and Egyptian at once, and as possibly the oldest pyramid, or an amalgam of all three. Driller Quinn promised to reach that depth in seven days. Lex wanted three more weeks of training, because Bouvetoya is one of the most isolated places on Earth and the nearest land is about a thousand miles away. Weyland refused, because other satellites would see the site if they waited, and he treated the pyramid as worth the risk.
Lex walked out and left him to find another guide. She stayed when the replacement was Gerald Murdoch, a man with two seasons of ice time, because she would not send that man down in her place. In the novel Weyland leaned on a nine iron through the briefing, then collapsed in the corridor. Stafford got him into a cabin fitted out like a hospital ward and onto an oxygen mask before the crew could see him. In the film the support in his hand was a plain cane.
The Expedition Reaches Bouvetoya
The Piper Maru anchored about eleven miles off Bouvetoya, in sight of Olav Peak, which the whalers had called the Razorback. Weyland looked over the station, and Captain Leighton was to wait offshore until the team returned. They went ashore to the abandoned Razorback Point whaling station, where a shaft had been burned down through the ice. Lex wanted a man that sick off the expedition. Weyland went down the shaft anyway. On the descent a rope failed, and she caught him against the ice wall.
Hunters killed the people left on the surface during the storm, while the main party was underground. Quinn's drillers and Stafford's mercenaries, including Adele Rousseau, had come ashore with the scientists. Chemical engineer Graeme Miller was with them to date the stone. He went onto the ice for the pyramid. Dying in the cabin would have left the find to the others.
Weyland Enters The Pyramid
At the bottom of the shaft the team came through an ice grotto and found the pyramid, with a long stair and walls cut in more than one ancient style. Lex took the pyramid as the find Weyland had come for. He led them in at the base. The walk into the pyramid left him short of breath. In the novel Stafford carried spare oxygen, and Weyland used it in short bursts, leaning on an ice pole when the nine iron was no longer enough. Taking weapons from a hunter sarcophagus moved the pyramid's clock forward. Three Young Bloods were in the maze: Celtic, Chopper, and Scar.
Weyland's Lungs Fail
Weyland's lungs failed as the team moved deeper, and he used an inhaler in the dark. In the novel he held a portable oxygen mask in the sarcophagus chamber, and Lex tried to end the day and take everyone back to the surface. Stafford blocked the return, and Weyland stayed. Lex treated the find as his and wanted the team to go on together. He would not turn them around. The cancer had weakened his lungs, and the cold and the climb left him unable to keep pace with the people who stayed with him.
Scar Turns Away From Weyland
Celtic killed Stafford in a hunter net, with a spear through the chest. Weyland stayed on a wide stone stair so Lex and Sebastian could get clear, taking the expedition as his fault and buying them time. Scar came up those stairs, read a sick man, and turned away, following the Yautja rule against killing the weak. Weyland would not take that dismissal. He vented an oxygen tank and lit it, and the fire wrapped the hunter.
Scar Kills Weyland On The Stairs
Scar came through the fire and stabbed Weyland with his wrist blades, then dropped the body on the stairs. Lex saw that kill and went on with Sebastian. In the novel the blades went into Weyland's belly, blood started from his nose and mouth, and Scar hauled the corpse into the flames. The oxygen tank was in the dead man's hands, and the cylinder exploded along the stair. The founder of Weyland Industries died in the pyramid and did not return to the ice.
Personality And Skills
Weyland's public record was hotels, parties, and a golf club. The research buying stayed off that record. On the ice, Lex, Stafford, and his own lungs all pointed him back to the ship. He went down the shaft anyway. A death in the cabin would have meant a brief fall in the Weyland Industries share price, and other people would have had the pyramid.
He was a financier and an organizer. Stafford assembled the people, Quinn drilled, and Lex tried to get the team back to the ship. Weyland decided the pyramid was worth the risk and stayed with it. When Scar turned his back, Weyland vented an oxygen tank and lit it.
Relation To Peter Weyland
Prometheus names Peter Weyland, played by Guy Pearce, as the man who founded Weyland Corp. A TED talk set in 2023 showed the younger Weyland on a stage with the line "If we can, we should." Charles died on the Bouvetoya stairs in October 2004. Peter lived into old age and died on LV-223 when an Engineer killed him. Ridley Scott told Empire in May 2012 that he had not seen either AvP film, because he could not take that step. In May 2019 he told The Hollywood Reporter that Alien vs. Predator was a daft idea and that it had brought the creature down, so Prometheus started again as a prequel.
The 2012 Weyland Industries timeline, published for Prometheus, lists Peter's birth in Mumbai on 1 October 1990. His parents there are an Oxford-educated Professor of Comparative Mythology and a self-taught engineer, and the timeline names neither of them. On 1 October 2004 it has him turn fourteen and, days later, patent a synthetic trachea. It dates the incorporation of Weyland Corp to 11 October 2012. Fans call Charles that unnamed engineer, and Peter's father, so both founders can stand in one Weyland family line. They are matching the timeline's dates to Charles's death in October 2004. No film, novel, or game states the relationship.
Relation To Michael Bishop
Michael Bishop, credited as Bishop II, was born in 2127. Alien 3 presents him as the designer of the Bishop android line, and the androids have his face. Lance Henriksen played both him and Charles, and the Bishop android aboard the Sulaco carried that face in Aliens. More than a century after Bouvetoya, Michael landed on Fury 161 in Alien 3 and offered to cut a Queen embryo out of Ellen Ripley. He was a Weyland-Yutani executive of that later century, born long after the October 2004 death on the pyramid stairs.
In the film he is human. The shooting script has a blow to the head open real blood, with no wires and no white fluid, and the Assembly Cut has him insist he is human. In 1992 Henriksen described the part, for L'Ecran Fantastique, as the man who made Bishop in his own image. On the 2003 commentary he again called Bishop II the human who built the androids. After Alien vs. Predator he described Bishop II as a more advanced android instead. Fans explain the shared face by calling Michael a descendant of Charles, or a genetic copy of him. No film or novel shows that origin.
Bishop Line Androids
Alien 3 presents Michael Bishop as the human who designed the Bishop line on his own face, and the Sulaco unit is the Hyperdyne Systems 341-B from that line. Paul W. S. Anderson gave a different account of that face. In Fangoria in 2004 he described Charles as the physical model for the Bishop android in Aliens and Alien 3. On the Prague set, quoted in that piece, Henriksen said a builder would copy his own face onto an android, because the machine would outlive him. The films do not show Charles's features being taken for the 341-B.
Later units took Weyland names and company posts. In Aliens: Colonial Marines, a synthetic called Michael Weyland stood in for the human designer on LV-426, and Dwayne Hicks destroyed that double after the human left the moon. In Aliens vs. Predator (2010), Karl Bishop Weyland directed research on BG-386 while presenting himself as a human descendant of Charles, until the Colonial Marine called Rookie killed him.
Behind The Scenes
Paul W. S. Anderson wrote and directed Alien vs. Predator, with a screenplay credit shared with Shane Salerno. Lance Henriksen played Weyland. He had played the Bishop android in Aliens and the human called Bishop II in Alien 3, and Anderson cast him so the android would be a copy of the company founder's face. Principal photography used the pyramid sets at Barrandov Studios in Prague. Amalgamated Dynamics built the creature suits, and Ian Whyte played Scar. The film opened in the United States on 13 August 2004.
Henriksen is often grouped with Bill Paxton and Michael Biehn, actors whose characters are killed by an Alien, a Predator, and a Terminator. A warrior Xenomorph killed William Hudson in Aliens, the City Hunter killed Detective Jerry Lambert in Predator 2, and a T-800 killed Paxton's street punk in The Terminator. Biehn had Kyle Reese killed by a T-800, and Hicks died in the opening of Alien 3. He joined the group in 2025, when a Predator killed Captain Vandenberg, called Vandy, in Predator: Killer of Killers. A T-800 killed Detective Hal Vukovich, and Scar killed Weyland on the pyramid stairs. The Queen tore Bishop in half in Aliens and he survived. In Alien 3, Ripley shut him down at his request, which is why his Alien death is disputed.
HarperEntertainment published Cerasini's novelization on 29 June 2004, weeks before the film. He worked from earlier drafts. In the book Weyland was a man in his forties, with black hair and a nine iron for a cane, and the illness was named advanced bronchogenic carcinoma. The film used Henriksen's older face, a plain cane, and an inhaler, and it cut the hunt from five Young Bloods to three. The book also had Scar pull the body into the oxygen fire until the tank exploded. The film left the body on the stairs after the stab.
Famous Quotes
- "My doctors tell me the worst is behind me."
- "You know, when you get sick, you think about your life and how you're going to be remembered. You know what I realized would happen when I go? A ten percent fall in share prices. Maybe twelve. And that's it."
- "You think that's the last thing your dad remembers? The pain? Or drinking champagne with his daughter fourteen thousand feet in the air?"
- "I need this."
- "Don't turn your back on me."
- "It's not on the ice. It's two thousand feet under it."
Conclusion
Charles Bishop Weyland founded Weyland Industries and led the October 2004 expedition under the ice of Bouvetoya in Alien vs. Predator. The lung cancer was terminal, and he went down the shaft instead of dying in the cabin. He stayed on the pyramid stairs so Lex and Sebastian could run, burned Scar with an oxygen tank when the hunter turned away, and died when Scar stabbed him.
Appearances
- Alien vs. Predator (2004)
- Alien vs. Predator (novelization by Marc Cerasini, 2004)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Avp Lore | Alien Universe Characters
