Neill Blomkamp Has A ‘Really Cool Idea’ for District 10

While doing press for his new film Chappie, director Neill Blomkamp has been bombarded with questions about the Alien sequel he is apparently doing next. But Blomkamp was also asked by IGN about the possibility of doing a sequel to his first (and, most agree, still best) movie, District 9, unofficially known as District 10. Here’s what he had to say:

"I have an idea for District 10, which is really cool. The problem is I feel like Chappie is the end of three films that have a similar stylistic approach to them. Chappie is the odd one out in that is has no socio-political underpinnings. It doesn’t have my experiences as a kid in South Africa incorporated into it. And Elysium -- although it doesn’t have my experiences as a kid in South Africa, it has the same notion of oppressor in the elites, and the large population base beneath it. And Chappie doesn’t, but they are still part of a trilogy. So moving forward I would love to realize this idea of District 10 -- I have every intention to do it, I just need to find the right time to do it -- to not go back to Johannesburg and shoot something similar, yet."

So it sounds like Blomkamp realizes his three movies so far (including Elysium) have had similar tones, visual styles and thematic concerns to some degree, and he wants to take a break from that before he’s ready to tackle District 10. At least now he does have a sequel on his mind, something he says wasn’t always the case:

"It was a completely self-contained story about the Nazi becoming the Holocaust victim, basically. It was the oppressor becoming the oppressed. And when it’s based on a character like that, it ends on that character. The inadvertent world creation that came with it, which to me is my perfect kind of thing that I love -- having a bunch of weird alien weapons in the back of a shack that you can discover -- that’s just ripe for creative insanity, so it took a few years to process what that could be. And I think that the story that I have now is what I would want to see as a fan of the first film, I think. I know I would want to see it -- I assume other people would. It’s good man!"

While Chappie is not doing that well with critics, its performance at the box office will be a large factor in determining what Blomkamp does going forward. An Alien movie seems like a sure bet, but if Chappie nosedives, he might not enjoy the creative freedom he’s had until now. Do you want to see District 10? Where do you think the story should go?