It was announced last week that after months of waiting to hear anything solid, District 9** director Neil Blomkamp has started to move into high gear on his next project, a mysterious film called Elysium. And now, according to Deadline, Matt Damon is in the early stages of negotiating to sign on.
Nothing has been set in stone yet – as is customary in Hollywood, the actor, his management team and Blomkamp’s representatives are in the flirty, giggly stages of figuring out whether they’ll be good together. But if he does jump in with both feet, Damon will be working alongside Sharlto Copley on a project still largely shrouded in secrecy.
Media Rights Capital is the company gathering together the cash to get it made, and making plans to approach distributors once everything is in place. We’d imagine that having Damon committed to one of the starring roles would help that process immensely.
As for Elysium? The mythological definition has it as a chunk of the underworld, but Blomkamp has said the movie will be set in the far future on another planet, so we figure the name will merely be a tonal description. Still, it’s exciting to ponder what the man who brought us Wikus van der Merwe is up to next…