UPDATE: According to Hollywood Reporter, Sony has picked up ELYSIUM.
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Nordling here.
Anything that Neill Blomkamp does at this point, I'll be there for. His next project, ELYSIUM, is another socially conscious sci-fi film set 100 years into the future, with all the technological advances and gadgetry that that implies. He's scored some major actors to be in the film - Matt Damon, Jodie Foster - and I'm thinking he's using his newly gained clout from DISTRICT 9 to deliver something as visually stunning as that film with just as hard-hitting a social message.
From Deadline we get a new bit of information - the set designer will be none other than Syd Mead, who we all know from the amazing sets and imagery of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER. This sounds like a leap of ambition for Blomkamp - Deadline calls it "an unabashedly big movie" - and Mead is a notoriously tough sell for these kinds of films, turning down projects right and left, but apparently he admired DISTRICT 9 so much that he signed on.
With this film, Scott's PROMETHEUS, and Duncan Jones' next film after SOURCE CODE which will be a futuristic film inspired by BLADE RUNNER, big, thoughtful science fiction looks to be coming our way soon enough, and I can't be happier. Good sci fi's always been about more than explosions, and even though DISTRICT 9 delivered on the action front there was obviously real thought that went into the story and the social aspects. Seeing Blomkamp with a real budget behind him is going to really be something, I'd bet.
Nordling, out.
