District 9 Directing the Halo
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0123456789 District 9 DIRECTING THE HALO MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO SEND NEILL BLOMKAMP INTO THE HOLLYWOOD STRATosphere — until STUDIO SQUABBLING SUNK IT. NOw he’s trying fOR THE SLEEPER SMASH OF THE SUMMER WITH DISTRICT 9, VIA THE HELP OF PETER JACKSON AND ALIENS “About your TV licence, sir...” Multi-National United apparatchik Wikus (Sharlto Copley) harasses the E. T. slum-dwellers of District 9. WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN films, and we thought it was great. So Mary jumped on a plane with Neill, flew him down, EING BUDDIES WITH overwhelming.” And on top of that, your the design, from the first pieces he made.” we met with him, and he basically stayed here. Director Neill Blomkamp PETER JACKSON host might let you play with aliens and Word quickly spread as the South African promises “a lot of crazy He didn’t get to go home again!” COMES WITH A FEW spaceships. But more on that shortly. wunderkind moved into the world of technology”. Like this cannon The internet quivered with excitement. PERKS. YOU’LL GET Flash back a couple of decades and commercials — remember that Citroën one with built-in bottle-opener. Bungie Studios’ Halo series, which pits TO BROWSE HIS VAST Blomkamp, now 29, was breathing far less with the dancing car? — reaching the ear of Sir genetically modified space-commando Master Bcollection of World War I weapons and rarefied air. Born in Johannesburg, South Ridley Scott, who was so impressed he signed Chief against alien alliance the Covenant, biplanes. If you ask nicely, he might let you Africa, he grew up during the ugly apartheid Blomkamp to his production company, RSA. is what’s known in the gaming industry as an hold one of his Oscars. And if you’re ever in years when black citizens were forced into And when, in 2005, Peter Jackson decided ‘AAA’, a multi-format behemoth with a rabid the locality of Masterton, north of Wellington, segregated zones, or ‘bantustans’. As a white to produce a live-action adaptation of hit fanbase. Blomkamp’s a Halo nut, Jackson an you might just get a chance to stay in the child, he rarely ventured into these mysterious video-game series Halo, Blomkamp was the avid gamer himself (he tells us he and Guillermo geekiest spare room on Earth: Bilbo’s Hobbit areas. Instead, he’d sit at home and tinker with newbie he picked to head it up, over a host del Toro are currently obsessed with Call Of hole from The Lord Of The Rings, which now the mechanical knick-knacks his dad, an of more experienced directors. Duty: World At War’s zombie-Nazi level, nestles in the garden of Jackson’s mansion. engineer in the mining industry, brought home “With Halo, we wanted to find somebody possibly the reason The Hobbit’s taking so “You know the six-star hotels in Dubai? from work. A fixation that led him to futuristic, new and godfather them through the process, long). With the latter overseeing the script Imagine a Shire version of that,” marvels Neill meticulously designed movies like Alien and rather than turn to an established person,” and the former feverishly working with Weta Blomkamp, first-time feature filmmaker and RoboCop, which in turn inspired him to create Jackson tells Empire, sipping a mug of tea at on creature maquettes, vehicle designs and current Jackson protégé. “Pete just invited us short films that gave his dusty hometown a sci-fi 7.30am on what he terms a “dark and stormy fantastical environments, surely it would be up there one day. I didn’t really know what to makeover. “It always felt like there was a real winter morning” in New Zealand. “Mary the first video-game adaptation to deliver expect. He’s got this underground passage — soul to the worlds Neill created,” says long-time Parent, the Universal executive, called us one the same thrills as its pixelly counterpart — 100 metres or something — that leads out to friend Sharlto Copley, who gave Blomkamp day and said she thought she’d found somebody a thundering, interplanetary war epic that a Hobbit village. I stayed in the little rooms with a job at his effects house, Deadtime, when he was really terrific. And it was Neill. She sent a DVD would plant Blomkamp near the top of the circular doors and everything. It was pretty 16. “It was always more about the emotion than down with some of his commercials and short the Tinseltown leaderboard. ›› [[1L]] SEPTEMBER 2009 EMPIRE www.empireonline.com EMPIRE SEPTEMBER 2009 [[2R]] 0123456789 District 9 BRIEFING RELEASED: September 4 DIRECTOR: Neill Blomkamp STARRING: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Robert Hobbs THE PLOT: Aliens have come to Earth, Except it wouldn’t, and it didn’t. Four all- specifically South Africa. There they consuming months into pre-production, the are quarantined and exploited by debuting director’s dream turned to ashes. government agents. A corporate suit, “Because Halo was shared between Wikus, comes into contact with the aliens’ Universal and Fox, the two studios started to bio-weaponry and undergoes a strange squabble with each other,” sighs Jackson. “There transformation. Seeking refuge among was a sort of Biggus Dickus thing going on Here: Wikus gets in trouble with the extra-terrestrials, he sparks about who was going to control the project, some of Johannesburg’s more a stand-off between the two worlds. sinister citizens. Left (top to BASED ON: who had the rights, who was paying for this bottom): Weta’s District 9 concept Alive In Joburg, Blomkamp’s or that. And slowly, over the course of three or art deliberately evoked the apartheid 2005 short that was shot guerrilla-style. four weeks, the whole thing just withered and era. Okay, not the whopping great died. It was heartbreaking. Fran (Walsh, his spaceship so much. wife and filmmaking partner) and I felt terrible — this was Neill’s first feature and his first experience of this world...” Blomkamp is less forthcoming about the Blomkamp. “It’s a city with extreme wealth and farrago, but quietly declares, “If Halo ever comes extreme poverty. But it was only when I moved back, it won’t be with me. I love that universe to Canada that I became fascinated with where aspects of them that are repulsive.” Jackson and feel I could have made a really good film, I’d grown up, weirdly enough. I began to realise adds, “They’re high-tech — certainly more high- but with the politics and everything else that I wanted to see the Western sci-fi I liked, but tech than Bad Taste’s aliens — but they look attached, I don’t want anything to do with it.” Alive In Joburg posits this question: what in this African setting. We always see sci-fi in LA sort of like a cross between an insect and a if an alien spaceship arrived on Earth, and its or New York, so what does it look like when you prawn. The Afrikaners in the story actually call UT EVEN AS THE passengers greeted not with Kodály Method put it in this new context?” them ‘prawns’ as a derogatory nickname.” EFFECTS WIZARD hand-signs and a lovely bit of John Williams Well, it looks like District 9. The feature- Given their appearance, it’s hardly surprising PREPARED TO BOOK synth, but shackles and an order to remain in length expansion of Alive In Joburg retains the that they’re treated with disdain by their human HIS FLIGHT BACK TO ghettos? The six-minute short (available to short’s jittery vibe and promises to be that rarest hosts, not least the employees of Multi-National VANCOUVER, HIS HOME watch on YouTube) is a stunning piece of of things: a smart summer sci-fi film, devoid of United, a shadowy corporation that’s been Bsince 1997, salvation arrived — in the form of work considering its tiny budget and the fact product placement, jive-talking robots and Vin created to control — read, exploit — them. that DVD Mary Parent had mailed to New Blomkamp created the effects on his own in Diesel’s sweaty pate. “It’s unique to Neill,” says designed with tongue firmly in cheek.” them in later with CGI, the director gave his brief District 9’s lead character is Wikus van der Zealand all those months ago. “It was Fran who under two weeks. Key to its impact is the style Jackson. “A great mix of his life experience, These visitors from beyond the stars might to effects house Image Engine: imbue them with Merwe, an MNU inspector who has to deal with came up with the idea,” says Jackson. “One of and setting: a handheld camera, seemingly witnessing the apartheid era in its final days, and not be hankering for a man-burger, but they’re the grace and grooming regime of a particularly the aliens on a day-to-day basis. When it came Neill’s shorts that we’d seen was called Alive In wielded by a documentary crew, venturing into this genre fantasy. When I made Bad Taste, my still, on the surface at least, creepy little buggers. unsanitary pygmy hippo. to casting, Blomkamp made two bold decisions: Joburg. I was out at a meeting and when I came the volatile streets of Johannesburg, capturing own experience didn’t stretch very far — the aliens It was quickly decided not to go the man-in-suit “They slobber a lot, spit a lot, things like he would a) ask his actors to entirely improvise back she was on the sofa with Neill, watching it glimpses of aliens cowering in decrepit shanty- were killing humans to make fast food, but apart route, given Blomkamp’s VFX bent and the fact that,” says effects supervisor Dan Kaufman.