Director Neill Blomkamp won’t be making an Alien film anytime soon, but he’s still been keeping busy, as he recently premiered a trailer for his new project, Oats Studios. You can watch the trailer above!
The Chappie and District 9 director has been teasing this project for quite some time, taking to Twitter in April to directly ask his fans, “If I sold experimental short films on @steam_games as tests for potential full feature films, would people watch them?”
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The Oats Studios trailer is very intriguing, with special effects that rival the looks of the biggest studios. The project claims it will be releasing “experimental” shorts, so it’s unclear if the trailer is comprised of footage from one short or multiple. If the footage all appears to have the same unified look, so if it was a compilation of multiple short, we can assume the “experimental” description comes from those shorts’ narratives.
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Blomkamp has a long history of short films, which he owes his entire career to. The filmmaker was tapped to direct a trilogy of short films, known collectively as “Landfall,” to promote the release of the video game Halo 3. Due to his impressive skills and knowledge of that universe, Blomkamp was hired to make his first feature film, which was going to be a Halo adaptation, produced by Peter Jackson.
When funding for a Halo feature film fell apart, Jackson decided to produce a feature-length adaptation of one of Blomkamp’s short films, Alive in Joburg, which became District 9. Following that film, Blomkamp was tapped to direct the Matt Damon-starring Elysium, which showed off many of the director’s discarded concepts from the Halo film.
The director’s next film, Chappie, another adaptation of one of his shorts, tapping the musical group Die Antwoord to star in alongside Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, and Sigourney Weaver.
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With Blomkamp collaborating with Weaver during Chappie, talks began between the two of them about a potential Alien film that would be set after Aliens and disregard the rest of the franchise. The talks yielded concept artwork for the project, which Blomkamp shared on social media, generating buzz that it could actually happen.
When Ridley Scott took on Alien: Covenant instead of the studio pursuing Blomkamp’s Alien 5, it was the nail in the coffin of the project, burying any hope that the director could bring Ellen Ripley back to the franchise.
The relationship between Blomkamp and Weaver hasn’t dwindled, however, as she makes a brief appearance in the Oats Studios trailer.
[H/T YouTube, Oats Studios]
