The first of them, Lliam Worthington's One Less God, will have its world premiere in the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles next month.

With a little-known cast that includes Joseph Mahler Taylor, Mihika Rao and Kabir Singh, it follows events from the perspective of both hostages and terrorists over the three-day siege at Taj Mahal Hotel.

Worthington has previously said the film looks at the "theatre of the mind" that plays out among travellers trapped in their hotel.

"We spent years researching and writing, and once we became immersed in the events and the geopolitics, we knew we needed to get beyond the timeline of events that were filling the news cycles," he said. "We wanted to get to the heart of the tragedy, and also beyond it, to the people on both ends of the guns."

Also heading for cinemas is Anthony Maras' much bigger-budget Hotel Mumbai starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, India's Anupam Kher???, Jason Isaacs and Nazanin Boniadi???.

Co-writer John Collee??? has said this film centred on victims and heroes of the attack along the lines of The Towering Inferno.

"We collected real stories from the event, sometimes compiling characters or changing the names of the victims," he said. "The servants, cooks and waiters of the hotel were the real heroes.

"The police were massively outgunned and couldn't do much so it was up to the hotel staff to hide their clients in various rooms then get them all downstairs to smuggle them out through the back passages and corridors that they knew."

Alien has a successful landing

It was shot in Australia so it was fitting that Alien: Covenant was the most popular movie in Australian cinemas when it opened last weekend.

Ridley Scott's latest film in the sci-fi series took $3.9 million with a solid average of $12,700 per cinema.

Its performance will be closely tracked when it opens in North America this weekend given there are hopes Scott will shoot the next two instalments, like Alien: Covenant, in Sydney.

The Goldie Hawn-Amy Schumer comedy Snatched also opened well with $2.9 million.

While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has quickly reached $26.9 million and Fate of the Furious is up to $28 million, they are still well shy of the biggest movie in recent months, Beauty and the Beast, which has romped to a very strong $47.5 million after eight weekends.

From usher to star

Former staff member Ben Rigby goes back to Melbourne's Cinema Nova as the star of the show on Friday night.

The actor and sometime photographer is down for a Q&A session about his role as Ledward that will follow a screening of Alien: Covenant. He will talk about what it was like on set, part of a cast headed by Katherine Waterston and Michael Fassbender, and working with the legendary Ridley Scott.

Rigby was working behind the counter at the Nova box office when his agent called. "I thought, oh no, they're going to run this ad I did years ago again, and I hate it," he said last year. Instead, she told him: "You just got a role in Alien: Covenant."

Twitter @gmaddox