Neill Blomkamp talks District 9 - RT Interview - Page 2

Costigan on 09-3-2009 08:12 AM

District 9 was a the suprise movie of the summer. It did a great job of constructing a whole new reality for the viewer held together with a good story. Usually I am totally against a sequels, but for this movie I think it would be a great idea.

Helge B. on 09-3-2009 08:17 AM

Metal Gear, Mr. Blomkamp, METAL GEAR...

Filmociraptor on 09-3-2009 01:07 PM

Metal Gear is a damn fine idea. Plenty of great story to build off of, awesome characters, great tech. Someone give this man a medal.

walken on sunshine on 09-27-2009 09:07 AM

Agreed!

Keep it in Canada.

bamb0o-stick on 09-3-2009 09:41 AM

I'm glad to hear that he's working on something else. Its good to see movies try to be more unusual and different. Movies don't have to be based on comic-books, graphic novels, TV shows, video games or novels. I'm starting to really respect this director for his view on the movie industry.

August M. on 09-3-2009 10:07 AM

Movies don't have to be based on comic-books, graphic novels, TV shows, video games or novels.

Many of the best and successful movies ever made are based on novels(Godfather, Jaws, Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, etc.) and comics(The Dark knight, Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.).

Why did you have to repeat comics twice with graphic novels? It's the same thing, they both have pictures with captions only one tends to have more pages than the other.

Sean M. on 09-3-2009 10:07 AM

I havent seen this flick just yet im really exciting about it. I love the the direction he took with this alien film and having someone as experienced and talented as Jackson involved its a recipe for a great flick. I also think Metal gear would be great but does anybody know why Halo went down the drain???

Sharon F. on 09-3-2009 10:07 AM

Oooh, please let him make a sequel. I'm dying to see the conclusion to this story.

dj Mark on 09-3-2009 10:08 AM

Blomkamp has proven that $30 million in the right hands can produce an excellent film. Unless you are Cameron or Spielberg, a bigger budget usually means more studio interference and he is obviously savvy about that.

It's also nice to learn that Jackson and Walsh are as down-to-earth as they seem.

Judo A. on 09-3-2009 10:54 AM

NO ONE is allowed to make a Metal Gear movie.

It's already been done, and its 4 games long. And delicious.

leaf71 on 09-3-2009 11:04 AM

I really hope that he doesn't make a sequel. At least for a long while. The Matrix was a great movie until the sequels were made. I'm afraid the same would happen with D9. I'd like to see what else Neill has up his sleeve. I think there's a lot of potential up there outside of District 10 or 8.

christian c. on 09-3-2009 11:09 AM

Neil if you dont do HALO i am going to do halo.

Gordon Franklin Terry Sr on 09-3-2009 11:20 AM

make it;
make it cheap;
and make it well;

and avoid the "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Syndrome:"

Blair Witch Project
Budget $500,000
Gross revenue $248,639,099

sequel:
Budget $15m
Gross revenue $47,737,094

"Will Sucess Spoil Rock Hunter?" yes.

"Am I my Brother's Keeper?" Yes (you must look after one another)

Money dosen't necessarily make a better movie . . . it seems just the opposite happens: the more money, the less creative the film tends to be.

CONVERSELY:
MAD MAX
Budget
$350,000 (estimated)

Gross
$8,750,000 (USA)
$100,000,000 (Worldwide) ( December 1982)

MAD MAX 2
(THE ROAD WARRIOR)
Budget
AUD 4,000,000 (estimated)
$2,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend
$2,527,864 (USA) (23 May 1982) (704 Screens)
AUD 847,220 (Australia) (31 December 1981) (21 Screens)

Gross
$23,667,907 (USA) (17 October 1982)
$23,226,636 (USA) (3 October 1982)
$22,370,061 (USA) (19 September 1982)
$21,840,875 (USA) (12 September 1982)
$21,052,119 (USA) (6 September 1982)
$19,134,368 (USA) (29 August 1982)
$16,187,629 (USA) (22 August 1982)
$13,318,807 (USA) (15 August 1982)
$12,566,262 (USA) (8 August 1982)
$11,879,604 (USA) (1 August 1982)
$11,236,735 (USA) (25 July 1982)
$11,024,479 (USA) (18 July 1982)
$10,829,042 (USA) (11 July 1982)
$10,533,103 (USA) (5 July 1982)
$10,043,673 (USA) (27 June 1982)
$9,480,853 (USA) (20 June 1982)
$8,618,887 (USA) (13 June 1982)
$7,499,801 (USA) (6 June 1982)
$5,910,160 (USA) (31 May 1982)
$2,527,864 (USA) (23 May 1982)
$23,667,907 (USA)
�2,500,000 (UK)
$10,813,000 (Australia)
$6,723,488 (Germany)
HKD 2,558,667 (Hong Kong) ( 1982)
SEK 6,993,205 (Sweden)

Weekend Gross
$308,889 (USA) (17 October 1982) (288 Screens)
$334,037 (USA) (3 October 1982) (323 Screens)
$293,374 (USA) (19 September 1982) (229 Screens)
$536,383 (USA) (12 September 1982) (356 Screens)
$1,131,891 (USA) (6 September 1982) (430 Screens)
$1,562,747 (USA) (29 August 1982) (552 Screens)
$2,589,209 (USA) (22 August 1982) (674 Screens)
$472,406 (USA) (15 August 1982) (153 Screens)
$442,452 (USA) (8 August 1982) (248 Screens)
$562,539 (USA) (1 August 1982) (267 Screens)
$165,980 (USA) (25 July 1982) (189 Screens)
$105,011 (USA) (18 July 1982) (118 Screens)
$182,595 (USA) (11 July 1982) (167 Screens)
$309,079 (USA) (5 July 1982) (237 Screens)
$299,511 (USA) (27 June 1982) (246 Screens)
$477,842 (USA) (20 June 1982) (276 Screens)
$703,089 (USA) (13 June 1982) (357 Screens)
$1,017,967 (USA) (6 June 1982) (478 Screens)
$2,391,058 (USA) (31 May 1982) (708 Screens)
$2,527,864 (USA) (23 May 1982) (704 Screens)

The Road Warrior however, WAS PLANNED before its predecessor

BUCK69 on 09-3-2009 04:04 PM

My God, man...My God!

King Kubrick on 09-3-2009 01:35 PM

That's right brother, keep it in Canada. Don't give those hollywood leeches anything. CANADA #1!

I have yet to see district 9; right now I'm in the furthest reaches of Northwestern British Columbia so we don't get all the latest release, but from Neil's description of the D 9 backstory, I'd say a sequel sounds quite interesting

Paul K. on 09-3-2009 03:25 PM

Seems like the interview ended to early haha. This guy should make some great movies, too bad he wont do Halo, im sure its gonna be made within the next few years no matter who does it, its just inevitable. I dont think they(the filmmakers)would bring that aspect of Master Chief being a product of a Greater Military Complex to Halo without Blomokamps involvement, which is too bad because thats a very compelling thing to talk about, in relation to our own Military Industrial Complex. If he were to accept Halo and deal with the political mumbo jumbo, i think he'd have a very memorable end product. Without him Halo might go all "G.I. Joe" on us, with ****ty paint by the numbers filmmaking. Save us Neil!

Paul K. on 09-3-2009 03:27 PM

Seems like the interview ended to early haha. This guy should make some great movies, too bad he wont do Halo, im sure its gonna be made within the next few years no matter who does it, its just inevitable. I dont think they(the filmmakers)would bring that aspect of Master Chief being a product of a Greater Military Complex to Halo without Blomkamps** involvement, which is too bad because thats a very compelling thing to talk about, in relation to our own Military Industrial Complex. If he were to accept Halo and deal with the political mumbo jumbo, i think he'd have a very memorable end product. Without him Halo might go all "G.I. Joe" on us, with ****ty paint by the numbers filmmaking. Save us Neil!

Bigbrother on 09-3-2009 03:31 PM

I finally saw District 9 last weekend and gotta say, didn't love it. Don't get me wrong it's a perfectly fine movie and the special effects were definately great for the price, but after all the hype I guess I just expected a bit more. I guess I didn't buy the motivations of the "evil corporate govt times" they just seemed so one dimensional and I guess I just didn't buy them as real people and Vickus was annoying as hell with the constant "Fooking" dialog. I mean there'd be entire scenes that were just nothing but him screaming and saying "fook" endlessly.

I guess I just wasn't paying enough attention, but how did the big ship get activated again? I mean the entire reason they were so fixated on the tube was so they could take the transport to the ship, then just out of the blue the big ship just activates and tractor beams them up, why couldn't it have done that 20 years ago? What did I miss that made that make sense, cause I feel I have to have missed something, but don't want to pay 10 bucks to find out. Again, I enjoyed parts of the movie, but just didn't get the hype to the extent it was given.

djducky on 09-3-2009 04:45 PM

First of all I LOVED this movie. Secondly, I registered just to reply to the stupidity in this comment. "I guess I wasn't paying attention..." is not a good way to state your point when expressing any opinion. Like a movie or don't, but at least watch the damn thing if you are going to write about it.

Bigbrother on 09-3-2009 05:31 PM

Did you even read my entire comment? I thought I was paying attention to the movie, but because that one part made so little sense to me, I feel I must have zoned out and missed a key element. If you're going to call somebody on something at least be smart enough to understand what they said before you go and comment about them. Please if you loved it so much, explain what I asked about if you can. I was admitting my own potential fallibility because if I didn't miss something that would be a hell of an omission.

Nathen B. on 10-19-2009 12:43 PM

I think that when the fuel was placed in the command module and that was operational then they were able to control the mothership and beam themselves up, leave, etc.

MadMan23 on 09-3-2009 04:56 PM

Nobody should die because they don't have health insurance. Nobody should go broke because they get sick.

Bigbrother on 09-3-2009 05:36 PM

Except maybe Hitler or Adi Amin, I'd be perfectly fine with them dying because they didn't have health insurance. :).

Ryan M on 09-3-2009 05:51 PM

District 9 was a amazing film

Bigbrother on 09-3-2009 06:09 PM

and I'm fine with others thinking District 9 was the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's your opinion, just wasn't for me to that degree. Please though someone who loved the film explain to me how the mothership came for them when Christopher, Vickus and the kid were still on the ground after their transport got knocked down.

planetawesome on 09-3-2009 06:22 PM

The tube got the transport ship working, the transport ship got the mothership working. That's how I saw it. Getting the tube to the transport ship was the important part, which Wikus, in his ignorance, didn't realize. But of course the kid alien knew it and was able to activate the mothership by remote.

Bigbrother on 09-3-2009 07:35 PM

Ahhh, gotcha thanks. That wasn't readily apparent to me and there was so much going on during the last half hour I didn't pick up on that. Still think it was good, but not great, but that makes me feel a bit better cause that was really bugging me. Personally I would have tried to steal a Helicopter myself instead of wasting 20 years digging thru a scrap pile, but that's just me :)

Premo Beat on 09-3-2009 09:33 PM

Humans used numerous helicopters when prying into the ship and apparently could figure out s**t about it or the weaponry or alien technology at all. So the canister of whatever and the smaller ship were obviously essential to activating anything.

Jen on 09-4-2009 09:37 AM

WARNING BIG TIME SPOILER!!!

The baby prawn triangulated their position, and brought the mothership to them & beamed up rather than flying to the ship. the reason they didnt do it 20 years earlier was because they were looking for fuel for their ship.
you remember the part where they were rummaging through the garbage pile and found the tube iwth the blue liquid? and they filtered it and that was there fuel. far more advanced than human tech. thats why they couldnt get the ship working. christopher was an intelligent alien, unlike the vast majority of prawns. So obviously he was working alone with his one friend. so it took a long time.
i think i answered ur question...

P.S. 'Fook' is the south african accent. It's set in Johannesburg. Think of how the south africans feel when in every sci fi they have to put up with New Yorkers accents :) ... When, yet again, manhattan is the assumed centre of the world and aliens decide to destroy it first..

Jen on 09-4-2009 09:47 AM

planetawesome on 09-3-2009 06:13 PM

"And what I feel like I want to do is work on my own films at low enough budget levels that I'm left alone. I don't want to work on huge budget films among the political world of Hollywood."

Good. That is good news. For us, the movie lovers. Bad news for Hollywood. Are you listening, Hollywood? You should be.

screwhead100 on 09-4-2009 01:42 AM

wow bigbrother, yur really losing sum points here, i mean do u even listen to the dialogue when yur at the movies?!?!!?

the reason they couldnt just steal a helicopter is bc the transport ship was the key/cockpit of the mothership......u didnt get that when they reconnected with the mothership and drove the mothership away to there home world?!!?!?

Jen on 09-4-2009 09:24 AM

UGH. this is the first i've heard of Halo being canned.

I'm SO MAD!!! There's so much rich material in Halo to make an EPIC sci-fi
Would've been brilliant. especially with blomkamp on board. I hope they do pick it back up, and I hope, despite the odds, that he does agree to be involved again.
Fingers crossed, for my perfect world..

Does anyone know the reason why it was scrapped????

Bigbrother on 09-4-2009 11:16 AM

I got ya, I didn't hear them say that in dialog and really didn't get that the pod was the cockpit and fuel tank for the ship. It really threw me when they're struggling really hard to get the pod back to the ship and then when they fail it still activates anyway. Thanks, I get it now. I was stupid and it wasn't very clear to my pitiful brain and Jen, I get that Fook is the South Aftican accent, I'm not THAT dumb and I have no problem with them using it since it was totally in keeping with the theme of the movie but it (the profanity) just got used so much, in the place of real dialog that I found it annoying. It's a pet peeve of mine I think profanity is a valuable part of the language when used properly, but find it annoying when people go on endlessly misusing it. 1 scene of "fook, fook, fookity, **** fook" is fine to establish the characters discombobulated and is even funny, but when that scene is repeated multiple times for extended periods it just seems like lazy writing. I still didn't care for the character development in the movie, I didn't get what the motivation of the disecting scientists and corporate types would be for the crazy *** cruelty they showed. How his wife gave up on him so quickly if she loved him so much, the only bad guy who was moderately developed was the Col. I don't know, I guess it just didn't blow my mind like I thought it would, probably a case of overhype biting me in the ***.

djducky on 09-4-2009 04:14 PM

Boy it sure is one thing to dislike a movie and something else completely to not understand it. The stupidity of your OP is magnified by your every comment. The swearing was not lazy writing. What do you expect a man in that situation to say? Should he have sat with the prawns and conversed about the weather? NOW again you demonstrate your own stupidity or complete lack of focus on one of the MAIN plot points of the movie. WHAT WAS THE SCIENTIST'S MOTIVATION??!! REALLY? I am not even going to justify that moronic of a question with an explanation. I stated before: like a movie or hate it that's all good; but be smart enough to understand BASIC PLOT points before entering into a discussion/argument about it.

Bigbrother on 09-4-2009 04:43 PM

Dude, why are you being such a **** about this? (See that's profanity that's accurate and clearly demonstates my point)I had a bad day and missed a plot point. Sue me, you admittedly have never commented on this site before so you don't know me at all. Now if you're interested in having a real discussion I'm up for that, but if you want to play a childish game of name calling on the internet, a popular hobby for the intellectually enlightened I'm sure, I've got better things to do. What do I expect him to say? I expect him to say something that engages the audience and advances the plot. Maybe that's too much to ask. As for the Scientists motivation I didn't mean their motivation for studying the Prawns, that's obvious, but specifically the one guy who keeps shocking Wickus with the electric prod even after he's shown a willingness to talk, apparently just for the jollies of it, that I really didn't get. Yes, there are the occasional mindlessly evil people in the world, but we're supposed to believe that all the people in that company are going to go along with the huge media cover-up when their is no clear benefit for themselves just because they're all evil jerks who get off on torturing Prawns? I don't know I think we can come up with something better. As I STATED, I didn't dislike the movie. I just didn't think it was God's gift to cinema and I was trying to clear up a few things I didn't understand. Forgive me for thinking the internet could be a place to gain knowledge. I was under the mistaken impression that that was kinda the point of discussion. I've freely admitted I was wrong about several points in this movie which several kind posters have been nice enough to enlighten me about without being dickish about it, now please enlighten me as to why you get so spun up that you need to berate people you've don't know based on a paragraph they posted on the internet about a movie you liked? I apologise for resorting to your level, but I'm not a stupid guy as most people who frequent this site regularly and know me will tell you, so being called names like moron and stupid doesn't sit well with me and it's a struggle for me not to respond in kind, but since you're new here I'm trying really hard to give you a free pass.

DodgeyDude on 09-8-2009 05:35 AM

Bigbrother,

The motivation of the scientists were that they have been trying to integrate alien dna into humans for years, and when Wikus gets infected and is able to use the alien technology, he is the 1st human to have done so. If they could replicate what happened to Wikus to other people, e.g. soldiers, then their army would be unstoppable. Or, they could sell their findings to the highest bidder. But basically, a lot was at stake for them, and so they were prepared to do anything to achieve their goal.

Bigbrother on 09-8-2009 04:42 PM

Maybe, but do your garden variety lab rats make enough money off of those kind of things to justify torturing someone for the heck of it? I guess it came down to it that I asked myself would I do that? and it was there behavior was totally inconceivable for me. I'm probably overthinking it, which is something I've criticized others for, so I'll let it go. I'm actually really glad so many people liked it, it just wasn't for me.

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Neill Blomkamp talks District 9 - RT Interview

The director on sequels and the Halo movie that never was.

Is Hollywood tempting you with offers?

That sounds like a reaction to the experience you had on Halo...

You said recently that you won't get involved in the screen version of Halo if it does get made. Is that still the case?

Did the work you put into Halo feed into District 9 at all?

Does all that Halo development work still exist?

Like Raiders Of The Lost Ark...

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