Our Comic-Con Team’s write-up of the ELYSIUM panel was posted today, and everything they said has definitely served to increase my excitement for a film I was already plenty excited about. That being said a lot of people are still wanting a sequel to writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s debut DISTRICT 9 no matter how awesome ELYSIUM be, to which I direct you to this excerpt from the panel write-up: “though the world was definitely different, ELYSIUM looked almost like an epic extension of DISTRICT 9, at least in terms of the slum settings, the great weapons and robotic action, and the heavy thematic parallels.”
And hopefully that will be enough for you, as Blomkamp has no immediate plans to serve up a sequel. When asked recently if another team up with Peter Jackson might happen, Blomkamp replied “the obvious place to work with him again is on ‘District 10,’ or ‘District 8,’ whatever you wanna call it, however, I’m not sure I’m making that film. It would be cool, but these films take two or three years to make, and the investments are so extreme, you can’t accurately predict where you’ll be a few years from now, I believe. If you’re not creatively invested in it, you’re making a mistake, and that creative investment happens day to day. So I don’t know when that feeling for a ‘District Whatever’ film happens.”
Which I’m fine with, as I’d rather see more original sci-fi work from the guy. Which in turn leads me to these tidbits about what his next project (s) might be: “I wrote ‘Elysium’ on my own, but I wrote [a script called] ‘Chappie’ with Terri [Tatchell], that was written at the same time. It’s like a fundamentally more simple story, a comedy, a heartfelt story, in a science fiction setting. And it’s fucking hilarious, it’s a really cool film. I can say that with confidence… It’s a smaller film, a more esoteric one. It may very well be my next project… It probably will be. But A) I wanna take some time off, and B) you need to know for sure that that’s what you’re going to do for X number of years. I have another idea for a horror, and for a comedy, but they’re way less fleshed out than ‘Chappie.’ ‘Chappie”s ready to go, and I think ‘Chappie”s what I’m making. But I’m gonna take some time to make sure.”
So there you have it, straight from the South African’s mouth. How would you feel about CHAPPIE, something that 1) reminds me of Charlie Chaplin and 2) is a complete tonal shift for the writer/director?
A little Alice Braga makes every sci-fi a little better. See the already-great PREDATORS for further proof.
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