Director Neill Blomkamp’s first feature film debut, “District 9,” the Johannesburg-set sci-fi, action pic was a bonafide banger. The sci-fi film took a dark theme like South Africa’s apartheid, and segregation and applied it to aliens. Sharing some DNA with the 1988 film “Alien Nation,” the film used non-humanoid aliens to establish drastic differences between the two populations. A rather large swing, the bold choices earned “District 9” four Oscar nominations in 2010, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. It ended on a cliffhanger with the promise of a sequel down the line. And Blomkamp has been trying to develop that film for years, but it’s still never quite come together.
However, “District 9” star Sharlto Copley spoke with Fandango (see below) to promote his new thriller “Beast,” which stars Idris Elba as a father trying to protect his children from a lion. He gave an optimistic update on the sequel tentatively titled “District 10,” suggesting that once Blomkamp completes his next project, assumed to be his “Gran Turismo” movie at Sony Pictures, it could finally get made.
“We came super close, and then he’s gone off to something else, but we were right there…So, let’s see in a year and a half after when he gets done on the movie he’s doing now,” Copley told Fandango.
READ MORE: ‘Gran Turismo’: Sony Developing A New Movie With Neill Blomkamp To Direct
We’ve known for a while that Blomkamp was working on a script for “District 10” with co-writer/wife, Terri Tatchell (“District 9,” “Chappie,” “Zygote”). However, the filmmaker has been busy over the last ten-plus years with many other projects like “Elysium” and “Chappie.” For several years, he developed failed legacy sequels like “Alien 5” starring Sigourney Weaver for a pre-merger 20th Century Fox and hoped to coax Peter Weller to return for his incarnation of “RoboCop Returns” at MGM.
You might remember that the original “District 9” film was produced by fellow filmmaker Peter Jackson (“Lord of The Rings”) after the two tried to make a live-action “Halo” movie that crumbled at the last minute. However, it’s unclear if Jackson or the special effects/props team at Weta will be returning to help with the sequel.
This update from Copley certainly is promising for folks still dying to see a follow-up. Let’s hope they make it happen.