As usual with Neill Blomkamp, details about anything he’s working on tend to be scarce until he’s good and ready and lift the curtain. His upcoming “Elysium,” slated with a summer release date, is still mostly under wraps aside from a few stills, but he’s not some Terrence Malick-esque tinkerer. In fact, he’s had his followup “Chappie” in the works for a couple of years now, long planned to be his third feature. When we chatted with him at Comic-Con last year, he reiterated it was still on deck, and it seems things are moving forward.
Catching up The Province, the director teased that “Chappie” — which will be a sci-fi comedy — is starting prep work, with Blompkamp planning to return to Johannesburg, where he lensed “District 9,” to shoot the movie. And that’s it. All else that’s known about the project is that Media Rights Capital are backing it, his wife Terri Tatchel has co-written the script, and post-production will once again take place in Vancouver, as it did for his last couple of movies.
As for “Elysium,” it’s essentially complete and the filmmaker is chomping at the bit for it to be released. “It’s kind of weird that it sits on a shelf and doesn’t come out until August 9th but I think a summer release is fantastic for the film,” he said. “Elysium is basically done at the end of February. I have some straggling VFX shots that go into April but it’s almost done. The stuff looks absolutely amazing.”
So a minor update, but still slightly more than we knew before. As for “Elysium,” it arrives on August 9th.
