Neill Blomkamp is sick of talking about Alien
In space, no one can ask you about that Alien project
Aux News Neill Blomkamp
Alien is still a chestburster for director Neill Blomkamp—at least, judging by a recent, inexplicably and unexpectedly contentious interview with Uproxx about his Gran Turismo adaptation. Between 2015 and 2017, Blomkamp generated quite a bit of hype for his now-canceled Alien 5, which would’ve focused on Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley character, despite the competing Alien-related projects, including Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Nevertheless, throughout that time, Blomkamp remained optimistic online, where he shared concept art and props.
In his talk with Uproxx, which takes a nosedive after the director is reasonably asked about living up to a seismic hit like District 9, the subject turns to Alien and the production designs Blomkamp posted on Twitter a few years ago. Blomkamp responds tersely, “It’s hard to define how little I care about what happens with Alien.” Fair enough!
While it’s clear something about the interview offended Blomkamp, it seemingly closes the book on his involvement with the franchise. And, to be fair, Blomkamp hasn’t been involved with Alien since 2017, when Ridley Scott declared the project all but dead, so it does make sense that he’s tired of talking about. “There was never a script,” Scott said at the time. “It was an idea that evolved from, I believe, a 10-page pitch, and I was meant to be the producer on that. And it didn’t evolve. Fox decided that they didn’t want to do it, and that was it.”
Last year, producer Walter Hill confirmed that since Disney bought Fox, their interests in Alien have changed. “We took a shot at that a couple of years back with Sigourney,” Hill told The Hollywood Reporter. “But that was back when Aliens was still at Fox. The people at Disney, who now control Aliens, have expressed no interest in going down that road.”
Still, the subject continued to follow the director, and though he comes off as burned in Uproxx, Blomkamp has had a sense of humor about the defunct project in the past. In 2021, he joked to The Guardian, “It’s possible that Ridley watched Chappie and he was like, this guy can’t do Alien so let’s just go ahead and move on.”
In the same interview with The Guardian, Blomkamp hints at how painful the collapse of Alien was for him. “I’m not gonna work on a film for two years and have the rug pulled out from underneath me and then go hang out and have beers,” he said. “It’s exactly why I don’t want to do IP based on other people’s stuff ever again.”
“If there’s something amazing and the set-up is right, I wouldn’t say no, but generally speaking, after Halo and after Alien, it would be unwise to do that”
Blomkamp has obviously reconsidered that stance, what with the release of Gran Turismo, which opens on Friday, but his point is well taken. It’s also clear that he has mixed feelings about a project he worked on for years and never went anywhere, and again, point taken.
Led by Legion and Fargo creator Noah Hawley, FX’s Alien TV series is currently in production in Thailand sans any of its SAG-AFTRA-affiliated stars. Given how the strike has been going, we’ll see if that egg ever hatches.
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Welll Neill, welcome to The A.V. Cllub. We talk about Taylor Swift and shows nobody’s heard of and/or gives a fuck about being cancelled.
I think Blomkamp should hire Bethany Frankel as the alien. She’s lookin’ for work, and since it’s not reality TV she won’t be violating her union’s rules!Plus, I’m pretty sure she kills after mating.
Alien: 1989
Based on everything he’s made after District 9, Blomkamp’s Alien is probably best left alone and forgotten. Incidentally, just today I was reflecting on the YouTube cottage industry of video essays that present “What [Well-Liked Writer or Director]’s Unmade [Usually IP] Movie” would have been like. I admit to at one point being fascinated by what alternate versions of movies could have been like, and I still like to watch alternate edits of finished movies. But the older I get the more I think dwelling on projects that never left pre-production is a complete waste of time.
Based on everything he’s made after District 9, Blomkamp’s Alien is probably best left alone and forgotten. Except that asking him about it annoys him. And he’s made that knowledge public.Rookie move, pal.
The take is ALWAYS “this would have been so much better than what we got!” Which completely ignores Sturgeon’s law.
If I could give you more stars for invoking Sturgeon I would.
We always remind people to think Like a Sturgeon.
“Sturgeon’s law.”The uglier the fish, the sweeter the roe?
“90% of everything is crap.”- Theodore Sturgeon.
Whereas I think it’s almost always the funnest part of any book on a filmmaker. The Road Not Taken is inherently interesting. I’ll pass on Youtubers making 15 minute videos based on a paragraph of information, though.
I think in the context of a filmmaker’s life, yeah, it’s absolutely interesting. A filmmaker can spend years in development on a project that never gets off the ground, and that can have a noticeable effect on their life and work afterwards. But it’s increasingly only interesting to me in the context of that person. The story about Jon Peters’ crazy ideas for Superman Lives is only interesting to me because of how Kevin Smith describes it happening to him, not because I actually wanted to see that piece of shit.I suppose I should also note that it’s not just 15-minute YouTube videos, but entire, feature-length documentaries devoted to unproduced movies. It strikes me that for multiple docs like that to exist, there has to be some kind of demand, some burning desire to know what we as audience members missed out on that ignores the reality of how movies actually get made. All the pre-production artwork and screenplay drafts in the world will only give you so much of an idea of what the final film will end up like.
Well said in both posts you put up Killa K. I think for movies that were real stand outs, and then had sequels that “missed the mark”, there’s a desire from fans to figure out what went wrong or to imagine what could have been had things happened differently. I’ve always been disappointed with Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, as an example. I’m grateful that one of the other Alien 3 screenplays at least got an Audible audio release with a cast. It’s a shame that the way Hollywood works, things can get misaligned or disjointed, or people with bad ideas can shape productions in ways that the writers and directors have little control over.
I understand where you’re coming from and I agree that it’s a shame the Hollywood system enables people with bad ideas (or worse, bad incentives) to shape productions in ways that the writers and directors have little control over, but truthfully, things can get misaligned or disjointed for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s bad luck out of anyone’s control, and sometimes the writers or directors just have bad ideas.The flip side is that some of the best ideas come out of the process itself. Sometimes it’s limitations forcing filmmakers to use creativity to engineer a clever, innovative solution; sometimes it’s an actor ad-libbing a line on set. Sometimes movies really do get fixed in post. To me, that’s the appeal, and that’s what unproduced screenplays and concept art can’t reflect.
“entire, feature-length documentaries devoted to unproduced movies”I know more about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Dune than any movie that he actually made.
Ya gotta love those video essays that ramble on for 56 minutes explaining exactly how to better make movies by guys who clearly do not know how to edit.
15 minutes? They’ve often gone well beyond just 15 minutes quite a while ago.
I’m fascinated when there are complete scripts available of either early versions or films that were never made, but then again those are usually available online to read for yourself rather than listen to a sweaty 15 minute summary with inserted memes on YouTube.
Imagine how awful Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been. Completely unfaithful to the book, overly sexual, shock for the sake of shock, etc. I’ve been bewildered by fans who thought this would be some masterpiece. Auteur style directors taking on established material usually doesn’t turn out well. Ironically, later we got a auteur for Dune, and Lynch’s version while beautifully shot, set, cast, and costumed, just ended up disappointing as it falls apart as a movie halfway through.
While the Halo TV series was not great, Blomkamp’s vision for the Halo film would have been absolutely terrible and I’m forever thankful it never came to fruition. A classic example of a guy not understanding the aesthetic of the property he was going to adapt; at least Alien is supposed to be gritty.
highly recommend you check out the Simon Braund’s “The Greatest Movies You’ll Never See” from a few years ago. Great write-ups, and wonderful mockups commissioned from real poster artists, of what the movie posters might have looked like. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19794659-the-greatest-movies-you-ll-never-see
My interest in what-if movies dropped to zero from a combination of deathless online whining about unmade movies, and realizing that movies that were actually made are outnumbered by movies that weren’t by a factor of literally infinity.
If I recall his take was doing a direct sequel to Aliens and ignoring the sequel. Which at the time seemed odd but we have had both Halloween do that and Terminator do it twice.
… and Neon Genesis Evangelion and Full Metal Alchemist and Roseanne …https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3503950/handy-chart-lays-halloween-franchises-choose-adventure-timeline/
NGE didn’t ignore events, it retold them. FMA Brotherhood didn’t ignore the previous anime because it had a different idea, it ignored it because the ending was rushed and improvised due to the manga progressing slower than the anime; they aimed for a retelling of the manga and they just streamlined what was already covered by the previous show.
And Superman Returns.
It would have been exactly that. At a 2016 Aliens 30th anniversary screening in NYC I attended, Sigourney Weaver took the stage for an interview. While answering questions from both the interviewer and audience, she excitedly revealed that she and Blomkamp were working on a sequel that would take place immediately after the events of Aliens and Newt would play a major part of the story.
Reading the full transcript of the interview while knowing how it’s going to end lends an extra bit of je ne sais quoi to this exchange right here:One of my first interviews ever was with you for District 9, many years ago now…Yeah. That’s awesome. I generally am always down with anything to do with Uproxx ever since it was the only good Chappie review, so I’m stoked.Oh right, I interviewed you for Chappie, but didn’t write that review…For sure. For sure. But I mean, yeah, I’m just undying love.
It was a pretty good interview until it crashed and burned like that. The journalist had clearly done their research and had some interesting questions and directions to go in.I believe William Shatner and Ricardo Montalban filmed their scenes months apart.Also now hosted by Uproxx, possibly my favourite ever interview.https://uproxx.com/movies/speed-20th-anniversary-meet-the-passengers-of-bus-2525/
Blomkamp comes off as bitter and overly sensitive in this interview, but I’m convinced that exchange was lodged in his head when the interviewer later starts asking about District 9 and how it overshadows the rest of his career. He seems keenly aware of the critical reception to his movies and is probably pretty tired about people asking him questions like that over and over. He handled it poorly, but at least for me it’s easy to imagine what was going through his head. Frankly, I don’t like the question that starts with his anecdote about talking to Sam Mendes. By the time he admits he’s wondering if Blomkamp is “sick of hearing about it,” I felt like he was trying to steer him toward a specific answer, and I really dislike when interviewers do that. I know their job is to pull sound bites, but to me, if you don’t have the stomach to just ask, “Are you sick of people bringing up District 9 every time you release a new movie?” then don’t push it.I believe William Shatner and Ricardo Montalban filmed their scenes months apart.I think his point was that it’s unusual for an actor to self-tape their scene on a phone and send the footage to be used in a major studio film, not that they filmed their scenes months apart, which isn’t uncommon.
Blomkamp’s career is a real bummer. Sucks to see a guy peak with his first project and then get real bitter about it
Blomkamp is a hack. He had one modestly good film with District 9 and since then he’s churned out nothing but complete garbage. I had the displeasure of sitting through Demonic and it is easily one of the most laughably bad horror movies I’ve ever seen. His films before that were also schlock, with only Elysium being slightly elevated garbage.
I keep meaning to rewatch Elysium and see if it is as disappointing as I remember. I skipped Chappie and no desire to see that one; all I remember was that weirdo rap group was in it and that seemed like a hard pass. Sad that Blomkamp took the M. Night Shaymalan trajectory by starting strong and having diminishing returns. Though I did like The Visit well enough, so maybe Blomkamp just needs to make something smaller and suited to his strengths.As for Alien… almost all horror movie franchises get wonky after a few sequels. Combined with the attitude of “this movie was never made, but I *promise* it was going to be the best movie of all time” that permeates all of these cancelled projects and my interest in it is pretty low. Alien and Aliens were so good (I couldn’t really get into Alien3), let’s just leave it at that.
elysium is actually my favorite of his. as someone who grew up with johnny mnemonic and demolition man i thought it worked really well as a more ‘serious’ take on that kind of material. it’s a B-movie that happened to be made as an ‘important’ A-movie.
Chappie is weird, and sad. I avoided it for some time after it got absolutely slaughtered during the review cycle, but eventually curiosity triumphed (as I had unexpectedly enjoyed District 9) and I gave it a try. The ‘weirdo rap group’ were indeed excruciating, but if you consider that was sort of the point of them it makes the rest more reasonable. I’d give it a go if you get the chance. Elysium, in contrast, I found to be a turgid bore.Re the Alien franchise, the first four films each being of such different styles was one of my favourite things about it – Alien 3 steps away from the bombast of Aliens and becomes something I could imagine working on a stage; it’s smaller, all about the personalities and the idea of redemption, it’s a thoughtful piece, not really about the xenomorph at all, and I’m fond of it. Then we break away again to the (in comparison) romp of Alien Resurrection, with its themes of heritage and loyalty. However when it comes to Prometheus and Covenant, the less said the better. How I wish we had got del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness rather than Prometheus. *Rolls eyes*
Yeah Chappie was strange and Ninja, I cant remember the girls name, are kind of grating, but I enjoyed it, even if it’s not great. It actually had heart to it. It’s funny cause most of his movie deal with separation/wealth gap, and all took place or were filmed in South Africa, and I think he is from there, so there is the ghost of apartheid that kind of informs the theme of most of his early movies.
Man, M. Night Shaymalan is kind of the reason I’ve been hesitant to watch Knock At The Cabin despite having read the book.
Whichever studio exec sniffed out Blomkamp’s absolute mediocrity and kept him away from the franchise should be given…not a raise, they’re rich enough, but a nice pat on the head.
Blomkamp has always felt like a person with a great imagination who had the opportunity to make a really solid and fleshed out idea, only to get sucked into a whirlpool of never-ending rushes to push out an equally solid follow-up. I just get the feeling that if he was able to take a moment to breathe after District 9, he probably would’ve fared better in the long haul, but my guess was that the unexpected success gave him a sense of urgency that put him in a “if I don’t make something else soon, I’ll never get to make anything ever again” mindset. It even seems like he’s tried to do that kind of thing in the aftermath of his poorly received movies, but it’s more than likely that he had already become burnt out and jaded by that point and he probably just needed that time to collect himself rather than pursue “his next great idea.”
Hawley is probably the better person to bring the Alien(s) world forward. Blomkamp’s worlds are beautifully made but I think his focus on that element of the craft underbakes the actual direction. Honestly, I think Greta Gerwig could do a kick ass Alien installment. With all the undertones of motherhood, something different could be done in that world.