Neill Blomkamp is making video games now

According to IGN, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp is now the Chief Visionary Officer of Gunzilla Games, a brand new video game development studio with exactly zero titles under its belt—though IGN notes that its team includes veterans of major studios like EA, Ubisoft, and Crytek. We don’t know anything about what Gunzilla is doing, but its first big project is apparently going to be a “AAA multiplayer shooter that aims to weave in narrative elements,” which sounds to us like some kind of Overwatch-type thing but with a story that you don’t necessarily have to watch YouTube videos or read tie-in comics to understand. (Or maybe a Fortnite-type thing or a Call Of Duty-type thing, they’re all slightly different things.)

IGN likens Blomkamp’s role to what George R.R. Martin is doing with From Software’s Elden Ring, which is to say that he’s basically coming up with the foundational lore of this “AAA multiplayer shooter,” which is probably a good gig for someone like Blomkamp who so clearly enjoys creating little worlds for his films. IGN, bless its heart, asked Blomkamp about how he’s translating his experience as a screenwriter to a video game genre that doesn’t generally involve much writing—as if Blomkamp movies are known for having stories and not just for coming up with slightly different excuses to put someone in a cool robot suit, or give a robot a gun, or give someone a cool gun robot. (What we’re saying is that District 9 was really good and that Blomkamp is very well-suited to this role, and it’s on you if you choose to spin that into some kind of snarky criticism.)

As for Blomkamp’s gaming sensibilities, he’s a certainly a fan of the Halo games, since he tried to make that adaptation happen for a long time, but he told IGN that he found 2019's Control “highly fascinating” because of the way it merged video game advances with “really interesting design language” that made it like “walking around inside of a place that an artist has brought to you.” This, of course, is the Correct Answer, because Control was a damn masterpiece, so Gunzilla’s project is at least starting on a promising foot.