Years before he went off to a galaxy far, far away, John Boyega headlined Joe Cornish's brilliant sci-fi horror directorial debut Attack The Block – a funny and stylish tale of aliens touching down in South London and facing resistance from teenager Moses and his FIFA-loving mates. It's gone on to become a cult favourite and catapulted Boyega to stardom – not to mention that it also stars current Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker. Since its release, Boyega went on to the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Pacific Rim: Uprising and more, while Cornish last year released Arthurian adventure The Kid Who Would Be King – but now it sounds like the star and filmmaker have thoughts of returning to the Block.
"We've got ideas," Cornish said of a potential sequel on the Script Apart podcast. "I met with John a couple of months ago to talk about it. We've always had ideas after the first one. But obviously we've both been busy doing different things." With the first film nearly a decade old now, Cornish hints that a sequel would take into account how much things have changed – or perhaps not – in the intervening years. "In a way, the longer you leave it, the more interesting it is," he explains. "So that's all I'll say."
The filmmaker also spoke about how the film has been celebrated again recently in the wake of Boyega's impassioned speech at the Black Lives Matter protest in London. "The movie's nearly ten years old now, and it's trying to address issues that were fairly ingrained then, and have certainly stuck around," Cornish says. "At the time when it came out, it put a lot of people's backs up, because it has a very unusual protagonist and arc." He adds: "It's wonderful that people are revisiting the film [...] Most of all, it's a moment for John, and it's a moment for hopefully some social change. To be a tiny little part of something that I hope is much, much bigger is exciting."
Listen to the full Joe Cornish interview – talking the scripting process of Attack The Block and its making-of on the page – on Script Apart here. Next on Cornish's slate as writer-director is a TV movie called Snow Crash, while Boyega will be seen in crime drama Naked Singularity. The actor also recently signed a Netflix deal with his company UpperRoom Productions to tell African stories on the streaming service.