Based on the reviews for his recent psychological sci-fi horror Demonic, Neill Blomkamp could really do with a hit. The movie holds a weak 18% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which unfortunately continues the downward trajectory that’s plagued all of his work since he broke out in a big way with Best Picture nominee District 9.
Most independent filmmakers tend to make the jump into the blockbuster business eventually, but it hasn’t happened for Blomkamp as of yet, although it’s not for a lack of trying. He was deep into developing a fifth Alien movie that would have followed on directly from James Cameron’s Aliens before the plug was pulled when the studio opted to go with Ridley Scott’s Prometheus instead, while he also dropped out of RoboCop Returns.
Scott followed up his prequel with Covenant, and he’s now involved with Noah Hawley’s episodic effort that was announced to be in the works last year. With Disney now in charge, the franchise is set to continue on, and in a new interview Blomkamp addressed whether or not he’d ever be interested in returning to his abandoned feature film project.
“It was a case of both projects were moving forward at Fox simultaneously, and one of them was picked. Sigourney was unbelievably supportive and amazing. I have nothing but the best things to say about Sigourney. I’m such a fan of hers on every level. She was always into the project, but Fox just clearly doesn’t want it. I haven’t had anything to do with that for years. I wonder if it’s possible to do an entire loop, where you’re really into it up until the point it gets shut down, then you lose interest and years go by and you loop all the way back around to being really into it again. Maybe that’s hypothetically possible.”
Hawley’s show will be the first chapter in the Alien saga set on Earth, so there’s still plenty of cosmic ground left to cover. It’s surely only a matter of time before the series is resurrected for the big screen once again, but it sounds like Blomkamp would need an awful lot of convincing were he to be offered the chance to come back.