While many of us are still lamenting the fact that we'll likely never get the ALIEN 5 that DISTRICT 9 / ELYSIUM / CHAPPIE director Neill Blomkamp was planning to give us, since Ridley Scott intends to keep the ALIEN franchise tied up with frustrating prequels (my own rating of ALIEN: COVENANT wouldn't be far off from Eric Walkuski's 3/10… maybe a 5/10), Blomkamp himself isn't wasting any time crying over spilled Xenomorph blood.
The director has revealed that he has started up a company called Oats Studios so he can work on his own projects with no constraints, all while keeping an open dialogue with the audience. The plan is to release a series of online experimental shorts under the Oats Studios banner, making many of them free to view on YouTube. Blomkamp is also considering offering bonus materials through Steam for a nominal fee. If viewers want to dig into 3D models, VFX assets, concept art, raw footage, the music, etc., they would head over to Steam and pay for it.
The idea is that if people enjoy seeing the first volume of shorts for free, they might pay for the second volume or go to the theatre to see a feature adaptation of one of the shorts. Blomkamp has said that getting features out of some of these shorts is "absolutely the goal".
Blomkamp has already been filming for this endeavor as well, and has enough footage to cut together for the teaser trailer that can be seen below. In this teaser we catch sight of humanity being enslaved by reptile creatures, an alternate timeline Vietnam War, Sigourney Weaver (who would have starred in his ALIEN 5), and Dakota Fanning.
This sounds like a really cool experiment to me and I look forward to seeing what comes out of Oats Studios. It won't be ALIEN 5, but it should be fun nonetheless.
