Neill Blomkamp

While he’s been churning our short films from his newly minted Oats Studios, Neill Blomkamp has also been plotting his next feature film. While he’s made it clear that he’d love to return to the world of Elysium if any one would let him, he’s decided (rightly) to pursue a different tale: an adaptation of The Gone World written by his Oats Studios comrade Tom Sweterlitsch.

Elysium is far from Neill Blomkamp’s best movie — I’ll even bet money that he made Chappie so that the general public would forget about how much they hated that movie were Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley beat each other up while wearing mechanical exoskeletons on a space station reserved only for rich people. But it’s human nature to want to improve upon your failures, and Blomkamp is, as far as we know, a human, so it’s no surprise that he’d want to have another crack at it.

Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios is taking a kind of diet approach to filmmaking: testing out concepts that could be cool by making short films out of them with bonkers-high production value. The first one, Rakka, introduced us to an Earth almost completely overtaken by some fabulously gross aliens, and a few days ago we got Sharlto Copley as a very cranky God. Today, Oats Studios has rolled out Zygote, which sees Dakota Fanning and Pablo Cantillo on the run from a truly terrifying monster.

Despite the runaway success of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, the writer-director has faced increasingly diminishing returns as a filmmaker ever since. Whiz-bang visuals and an impressive cast weren’t enough to save Elysium, while Chappie has become better known in film circles as an internet meme (“That’s Chappie!”) than a film worth seeking out. Add in Blomkamp’s failed attempt at an Alien sequel and it seemed the director’s star had fully faded… that is, until Blomkamp announced his decision to create a serious of outrageous and expensive short films at zero cost to the public.

You know what they say: If they won’t give you Aliens, make your own.

I haven’t liked all of Neill Blomkamp’s movies, but I like Neill Blomkamp. He’s a filmmaker of bold ideas and obvious visual skills. The success of District 9, both with audiences and critics, speaks for itself. Since then, though, it’s been one stumble after another. His first Hollywood feature, Elysium with Matt Damon, was a disappointment; his follow-up, Chappie with Hugh Jackman, was a straight-up disaster. He moved on to an Alien sequel that sounded interesting (it would have featured the survivors of Aliens while ignoring Alien 3 and Resurrection), but Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant permanently killed any chance of the film getting made.

Someday, I hope someone makes a documentary about Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5. First the project was held up by Ridley Scott, then Blomkamp released concept art that kinda-sorta forced the studio’s hand, then Blomkamp’s Chappie bombed and 20th Century Fox started dragging its heels, and then Scott started saying that the project was never actually anything substantial to begin with. No Alien sequel, no matter how fun, could possibly match the twists and turns of Blomkamp’s real-life struggle to get the film made.

In hindsight, it seems kind of odd that we had two directors competing to make movies in the same franchise. Back in 2015, director Neill Blomkamp sort of bull-rushed Hollywood by releasing concept art from the Alien 5 sequel he had been working on for 20th Century Fox. This was despite the fact that Ridley Scott had already made Prometheus  —  a direct prequel to the events of the Alien universe  —  and was working on what would later become Alien: Covenant. After months of rumors and Blomkamp’s promise to bring back a few beloved characters, the project petered out, and Scott emerged the sole proprietor of the Alien franchise.

When it was announced that Neill Blomkamp, director of the fantastic District 9, was thinking about helming an Alien sequel, people were cautiously optimistic. While Elysium and Chappie were far from impressive, District 9 is by far his best project, and maybe it would be good for him to get back into movies about extraterrestrial creatures. But, alas, his take on Alien is probably not to be, as the director himself says the chances of him joining the franchise are “Slim.”

Commercials have recently gotten a bit of an upgrade. Spike Jonze recently directed that Kenzo perfume ad starring Margaret Qualley that went viral, and now Neill Blomkamp has entered into the fray with his short film, “The Escape,” that also doubles as a slick action-packed BMW commercial. It’s the latest in a kind of series by BMW: a bunch of loosely-connected action shorts all starring Clive Owen as a nameless driver.