It's the ultimate extra-terrestrial face-off, as Alien takes on Predator in the this autumn's sci-fi blockbuster. But, as its Geordie director tells Steve Pratt, putting it on screen was a real labour of love, - even if it did turn into a nightmare.

WHEN film-maker Paul WS Anderson goes travelling he carries two suitcases. One contains his clothes and personal belongings, the other is filled with movie scripts.

This literary luggage is a necessary companion for the Newcastle-born writer and director, who's been so busy over the past couple of years that he's barely had time to touch down at his Hollywood home.

Screenplays have to be read, wherever he is in the world. Most will never see the light of day, some will take an eternity to reach the screen. So Anderson was surprised by the speed with which his latest movie, the much-mooted but seemingly elusive Alien Vs Predator, made it from page to screen.

Two years ago, when we last met for the opening of Resident Evil, he was merely talking about the project with Twentieth Century Fox, which owns the franchises to both creature features. Yet here he was, a few weeks ago in a London hotel, celebrating the film topping the US box-office charts ahead of release over here this week.

There's a neat symmetry that Anderson, who first decided he wanted to make movies after going to the Saturday morning shows at Jesmond Picture House, should write and direct the film featuring the clash of the iconic monsters. It was, after all, another North-East director, Ridley Scott, who was set on the path to international success with the original Alien 25 years ago. Anderson was a teenage schoolboy when he saw that film in Newcastle.

Scott became an inspiration for the aspiring film-maker "because he was a guy who had made a success, not just commercially but artistically, especially with Alien and Blade Runner". In the science fiction film Blade Runner, he could see Scott's upbringing reflected in the opening shots over a scene of industrial sights belching smoke - a throwback to the chemical works in Billingham.

'IT was inspiring to know a major film-maker had come from the part of the country that I came from, because it's not easy growing up in the North of England and saying, 'I want to be a film-maker'. It's so much harder than if you grow up in London," says Anderson.

His entry into movies came via a short film, Speed, shot in his native Newcastle for Tyne Tees Television. That was expanded into his first feature, Shopping, starring a then unknown Jude Law and Sadie Frost.

The film has recently been released on DVD. "It was a nice experience, because when Shopping was first released it got a very mixed critical reaction - some was very good, some was just awful. Some critics just hated that the movie was there. They said Jude Law was too good looking to be an actor," he says.

"Now, cut to nine years later and some of the same journalists refer to it as a landmark movie which helped change the course of British cinema, which I think it did in a way.

"Some of the things we were doing, no one had done in Britain before. We wanted a soundtrack. Everyone thought that was a bad idea and somehow cheapened the movie. It was fun to have it re-released on DVD and be reappraised."

At 39, Anderson has films including Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon and Resident Evil to his credit but confesses that Alien Vs Predator was the most difficult movie he's ever made. Simply getting the pairing right was hard enough. The notion of pitting the two against each other in the mother of all monster confrontations has been gestating for a decade or more. Many scripts were rejected.

Anderson, it emerges, had been thinking about the idea long before Fox executives looked at ways of reviving the franchises. His basic concept goes back 14 years when he saw Predator 2 with his friend from Newcastle and director in his own right, Bharat Nalluri. "We talked about it endlessly - how would Alien and Predator fight?," he says. "I pretty much came up with the idea then, before I'd made any movies."

AVP producer John Davis calls Anderson "the ultimate Alien and Predator fan" who gave the same value to both creatures, something lacking in other screenplays.

"I didn't read any of the others until after we'd finished making the movie. They felt like Alien movies that happened to have Predator in them. In my mind, they got equal billing," he says.

His story finds an expedition investigating a strange pyramid-shape structure beneath the Antarctic wastes, discovering both Aliens and Predators lurking there. A face-off between the two gives the film its climax.

"I really wanted to design a story that, if you'd never seen an Alien movie or a Predator movie, you'd be interested in going to see the film," he explains.

"I wanted to make a Michael Crichton style, like Jurassic Park or Sphere. He's used as a pattern for a lot of this film - something unexpected happens, someone puts a team together, they go on an expedition, things start to go badly wrong and they end up running for their lives."

SOME considered directing the film was a poisoned chalice because of the risk of disappointing fans of both monsters. He admits that Scott and Titanic director James Cameron, who made the first two Alien pictures between them, were a hard act to follow. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection didn't do as well.

"There hasn't been a bad director working on the franchise, although some have fumbled a little bit. It's a hard frame to work in, although it's produced as many misfires as classics. And Predator 2 is not a great movie," he says.

"Alien was the bigger franchise but box-office had gone down and down with each film. Predator had been away for 14 years, like a king in exile. In some people's eyes you're never going to live up to expectations but it's like finding the Holy Grail - an Alien and Predator movie combined is a dream come true."

Shooting the movie in Prague was more of a nightmare. "There was no easy day," says Anderson. "It's hard enough making a film with one creature let alone two, with all the paraphernalia, puppeteers and animatronics on the set. It was really complicated.

"And it was set in the Antarctic but filmed in Prague so we had lots of fake ice and snow. The only two days we didn't was the opening climbing scene, filmed on an ice waterfall 4,000 metres up where temperatures were minus 41. I wanted that kind of reality. Audiences really know if you fake something like that.

"It was a hard but fun movie to make because the whole cast and crew were Alien or Predator fans. There was a lot of lively debate in the bar after work about which was best."

Since AVP, he's produced a thriller, The Dark, shot in the Isle of Man and Cornwall, starring Sean Bean, with whom he worked on Shopping. He's uncertain of his next move. He's been working on a remake of the Roger Corman film Death Race for seven years but that's still on the back burner. "As a director, I don't know what I'm going to do next. I have a huge pile of scripts," he says.

He's unlikely to be short of offers after consecutive number one movies in the US with Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which he wrote, followed into the top spot by Alien Vs Predator, which he wrote and directed. "That doesn't happen very often," he says.

Alien Vs Predator (15) is now showing in cinemas. The original Predator and Alien 3 are showing on five from 9pm on Sunday.