Though he usually tries to keep future projects under wraps, **District 9 **/ Elysium director Neill Blomkamp actually let slip that the world could be seeing his Chappie at some point in the future. Quit giggling: Chappie** is his planned sci-fi comedy film. Given their long working relationship and clear rapport, we wondered how long it would be until Sharlto Copley was announced, and now we know for sure that he's involved.
It’s hardly a surprise that the man who played the bumbling yet heroic Wikus Van De Merwe in District 9 and is back on our screens as the hard-assed, ruthless Kruger in Elysium would lock in the lead for a future Blomkamp project, but nothing had been made official until Copley posted on Facebook and EW picked up the story.
So what do we know about Chappie so far? Talking at Comic-Con last year, Blomkamp said: "I was writing Elysium and I had this idea for this film and so I wrote it with Terri Tatchell, who wrote District 9 with me. I came up with the original idea and within three weeks, it was done. I would write that with her and then write Elysium on my own. It was a fairly fully-formed idea. It’s much more simplistic than Elysium in terms of overall concept. It’s a much more simple thing."
Simple is one thing. But please, reveal more of your Chappie, sir! "District 9, Elysium and Chappie were all born out of some visual concept first," Blomkamp explained. "Chappie is the imagery, because I think I’m a visual person first, of this ridiculous robot character. It’s much more comedy based, and in an unusual setting." Ridiculous robot comedy? Copley’s surely going to make that one fly. There’s no word yet on when it’ll kick off shooting, but hopefully we’ll all see this msyterious Chappie soon. We reached out to several Prawns for comment, but they were too busy eating cat food.
Copley has worked on a few movies recently, including Europa Repor****t, Maleficent, Open Grave and Oldboy. Elysium, meanwhile, will be with us on September 20.