Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp’s new directorial effort “Demonic” scored an early release and whilst out doing publicity interviews for the film, he touched upon another project – one that didn’t come to fruition.
That, of course, is his fifth “Alien” film that planned to serve as a direct sequel to “Aliens” – ignoring the events of David Fincher’s “Alien 3”. The “District 9” filmmaker famously shared concept art from the project in the past.
The movie never took off due to what was believed to be the intervention of filmmaker Ridley Scott, who pulled the plug so as not to cause confusion with his return to the franchise with “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant”.
Speaking with The Guardian, Blomkamp says he believes it’s possible the poor reviews for his “Chappie” when it was released might have led to Scott’s intervention:
“It’s possible that Ridley watched ‘Chappie’ and he was like, ‘This guy can’t do ‘Alien’ so let’s just go ahead and move on… there’s no coming back from that. I’m not gonna work on a film for two years and have the rug pulled out from underneath me and then go hang out and have beers. It’s exactly why I don’t want to do IP based on other people’s stuff ever again.”
Blomkamp also says he felt particularly bad for Sigourney Weaver who appeared in “Chappie” and was set to be a huge part of the planned new “Alien” film:
“I also felt bad for Sigourney because she was really into what I had brought forward. I felt like audiences who loved ‘Aliens,’ there was an opportunity to do one more film with Sigourney in a way that may have satiated what people were looking for and what I think I was looking for…What doesn’t make sense is that I feel like it’s what the audience wanted so it’s strange because Fox would never really turn down money.”
Blomkamp is developing a “District 9” sequel and has expressed an interest in potentially doing another story set in the world of his film “Elysium”. “Demonic” is out now.