While the director said this with a smile, there is some reality to the suggestion that famed director Ridley Scott saw the response to Neill Blomkamp’s 2015 sci-fi action film Chappie and decided he wasn’t the right man for the job.
At one point, Fox approved Blomkamp’s Alien 5, with the company confirming the news and announcing that the film will be a sequel to the first four Alien films. While Scott had expressed interest in Blomkamp’s ideas for Alien 5, the project was shelved in 2015, with the Chappie director feeling it was due to the negative reaction to the sentient robot.
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Chappie is a film directed by Neill Blomkamp and written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell that follows a police robot that gets kidnapped by gangsters. The gangsters raise Chappie, a self-aware robot, to assist them in criminal activity, but the robot quickly learns that it must feel and think for itself.
Chappie, starring Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Ninja, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Alien’s Sigourney Weaver, received mixed reviews from critics.
While it’s unclear whether or not Chappie’s popularity played a role in Alien 5’s cancellation, Blomkamp feels it did, and the times do match up. In February, Alien 5 was announced, in March, Chappie was launched, and in October, Alien 5 was scrapped. That isa bizarre coincidence.
The director also expressed his sympathy for Sigourney Weaver, who had praised Blomkamp’s sequel concept, as well as his surprise that Fox decided to scrap the movie despite good fan feedback.
Unfortunately, Blomkamp shot down suggestions that Alien 5 might be revived, saying that there will be movies with that IP, it simply won’t include him and indicating that he would not return to the project even if the studio and Ridley Scott wanted him to.
Neill Blomkamp is keeping busy despite the inability to launch Alien 5, having just produced the eerie horror Demonic. A sequel to District 9, is also in the works.
