Last month,** District 9** director Neill Blomkamp drew plenty of attention when he unleashed several pieces of concept art for an idea he’d had set in the Alien universe. Although he said on Twitter that he’d mostly been dreaming up the ideas as an exercise and an extension of his love for the world birthed in the movies, he’s now saying there’s a chance some of his ideas could become reality.
Sitting down with Uproxx to talk about his latest film, sci-fi action comedy drama Chappie, he explained why he began throwing around the ideas in the first place. “What happened was, when Chappie got heavily into post-production, I could take my foot off the gas a bit,” he says. “I was thinking about what I wanted to do next and I’ve been wanting to make an Alien film for years and years.”
A fan of the series, his ideas had not been focused on Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character, but working with the actress on Chappie changed all that. “Speaking to Sigourney Weaver, when we were doing Chappie, she set off a bunch of thoughts in my head. It was like, ‘Holy shit, that could actually be really interesting...’ When I came back to Vancouver, I had an entire year to work on Chappie. And when I wasn’t needed in the edit, I could think about Alien. So, I basically developed an entire movie and I did all of this artwork as well.”
But although it seemed at the time like he was getting the imagery out there as a taste of what could have been, he’s actually thinking it could one day happen. “There’s a high possibility, a high degree of chance that it happens that I go back and try to get Alien made.” 20th Century Fox still owns the rights to the Alien universe and is apparently committed more to the idea of **Prometheus **sequels than exploring the later timeline. Still, the studio is not the problem, according to Blomkamp. “Me. I’m the problem. Fox, they would make it. Like, tomorrow. They would make it.”
The director, though, is still wary of working via the studio route on something he doesn’t have total control over. “If it’s going to happen, it has to be on my terms. So, I came up with it and I’m bringing this to you. It’s not like, ‘Would you like to do Spider-Man 36?’ I still love it, I love the idea of the movie and I produced way more art than I put out.” We may never see this come to fruition, but it’s certainly fun to speculate.
Chappie, meanwhile, arrives in the UK on March 6.