Thursday, February 19, 2015

Neill Blomkamp’s Next Film Is His ‘Alien’ Reimagining



From slashfilm, We’re going to see that Neill Blomkamp Alienmovie after all.

Details are scarce but Wednesday afternoon, theDistrict 9 and Chappie director tweeted that his radical reimagining of the Alien universe – which was first revealed via concept art – will “officially” be his next film. Variety then confirmed the fact with 20th Century Fox and found out Ridley Scott is producing. Read more below.

UPDATE Feb. 18: Here’s the tweet in question. Variety confirmed with 20th Century Fox that a deal has been closed for Blomkamp to make an Alien movie and it’s not Prometheus.

Here’s the original story from February 10 where Blomkamp suggested the movie was all but read to get made. A fact we now know is happening:

February 10: This year kicked off with a bang when District 9and Chappie writer/director Neill Blomkamp posted Alienconcept images to Instagram. The pics featured renderings ofSigourney Weaver‘s character Ellen Ripley, the Hicks character originally played by Michael Biehn, and images of the engineers’ ship from Alien housed in a giant hangar.

There wasn’t much explanation of the images: were they for a film, or maybe a game? Had Blomkamp created them on his own, or as part of a quiet deal that hadn’t leaked outside Fox? Now the director reveals the truth about his Alien ideas — and he says that he could actually make the Alien movie heralded by the concept art. He just has to decide to do it.

Blomkamp talked to Uproxx, and the interview is surprisingly candid. The director explained that the art came out of a long-simmering desire to make an Alien movie.


Basically, what happened was, when Chappie got heavily into post-production, I could take my foot off the gas a bit. I was thinking about what I wanted to do next and I’ve been wanting to make an Alien film for like years and years.

The art came into being as the director was working on the post-process of Chappie, and he says we’ve only seen the beginning of it, teasing “I produced way more art than I put out.”

This all came about thanks to working with Sigourney Weaver on Chappie, which comes as a surprise to no one.


Speaking to Sigourney Weaver, when we were doing Chappie, she set off a bunch of thoughts in my head — I had come up with an idea that didn’t have Sigourney, it was a different idea. But I spent all of the shooting time with her, it was like, holy shit, that could actually be really interesting. When I came back to Vancouver, I had an entire year to work on Chappie. And when I wasn’t needed in the edit, I could think about Alien. So, I basically developed an entire movie and I did all of this artwork as well.

Blomkamp says he’s not giving up on the idea, and that Fox isn’t the roadblock to making it happen. According to him, it’s his own attitude about doing a franchise movie that keeps things at the theoretical stage. (“Sometimes Hollywood just sort of gets to me.”) If he gets his head around making it, Blomkamp says it’s a go.

Seriously, he’s certain about this:


Me. I’m the problem. Fox, they would make it. Like, tomorrow. They would make it.

As a refresher, here’s the art.

4 comments:

Octopunk said...

Hmmmmmm. On the one hand, I wish this franchise had just been left alone after Aliens. That may sound a bit harsh, but by the time you get to AVP: Requiem there's just nothing left.

On the other hand, Neil Blomkamp has skills.

JPX said...

I like Blomkamp but I don't like his idea of the Ripley/Alien hybrid. I hate that idea actually. I agree, they should have stopped at Aliens.

Octopunk said...

Okay, yeah, now I've read the whole article and I'm annoyed that he had a non-Sigourney idea that he ditched because he was working with her. I like Sigourney Weaver and all but I feel the chances of a new Alien franchise movie being good decrease the more she has to do with it. You'd have to jump through all these hoops to work her into the plot, yawwwwwn.

And please, bag the genetic manipulation/hybrid bullshit for just one movie and make the xenomorphs simply scary monsters again. Just try it.

Octopunk said...

Actually, yeah, that's the answer. The story suggested by the first two movies is how the Company gets an Alien queen and brings it to Earth and something goes wrong and the xenomorphs infest the planet. Just tell that story. No frickin' Predators, no Antarctic pyramids, no xenomorphs on Earth in the goddamn present day.

I think Dark Horse published a comic book story that was exactly that premise. I'm not saying that story should be the movie's plot, I'm saying the idea is right there.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...