New Alien 3 and Blade Runner Sequel News
Over the last couple weeks I haven’t been posting a lot of this news because I just sit and stare agog at most of it. WHA!? NO! YES?! You are kidding me. No no no. I’ll let you see it how I saw it on Blomkamp’s twitter feed:
Um… So I think it’s officially my next film. #alien http://t.co/QO5WrH2d6x
— Neill Blomkamp (@NeillBlomkamp) February 18, 2015
But, if you didn’t see my recent post about his previous posts on Instagram none of this is going to make any sense at all. Here is what Blomkamp (director of District 9, Chappie, etc) had to say about his original plans for Alien:
Was working on this. Don’t think I am anymore. Love it though. #alien #xenomorph A photo posted by Brownsnout (@neillblomkamp) on
Right? “Was working on this?”… but not now? And Oh gee, maybe some of these designs are the coolest Alien designs you have ever seen? Here’s the one that blew my mind:
Was working on this. Don’t think I am anymore. Love it though. #alien #xenomorph
You really have to understand the Alien universe to get this one. In Alien 1 its a visit to a an Alien planet that ends on a ship, and then an escape capsule. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is rescued after drifting through space in stasis for 57 years. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation are hacked over the destruction of her ship, the Nostromo, and they aren’t buying what she’s selling with regard to an Alien creature. LV-426 is the planet where the Aliens were found and it has become home to a colony of humans terraforming the planet. But it is the Weyland corporation’s hope to get ahold of the Alien species in order to help with their military outfit back on earth. Right? So Weyland is in direct disagreement with Ripley. Ripley (wisely) wants the Aliens destroyed. Weyland wants to preserve them for research and productizing. This is where the series goes all pear-shaped. This brings us to the chaos that is movie three and four. I’m not even going to go into either of those, because Blomkamp is going to act like they don’t even exist and he plans to build in a proper trilogy end. Which brings us back to that design photo that Blomkamp posted on Instagram a couple weeks back. It shows the mother ship, in a warehouse, actually probably within the Weyland facilities… (wait for it), on Earth. Yes. I believe that Blomkamp’s big idea is to have Weyland haul the mother ship (and the mother? all her alien(s)?!) to our planet. The movie would probably be set in the 2050 timeframe I would guess. It’s like the idea of Jurassic Park – with the park open and operational. Right? Which they did in Jurassic World. It ups the human impact exponentially. In Alien, we had one alien and a handful of alien food. In Aliens we had many aliens inbound. But in the new concept for Alien 5 (effectively the new Alien 3) we will have Alines and the entire planet as potential fodder. Its going to be a big big ante up in this series arc. Sigourney Weaver is even on board with this approach – and has signed on for the next movie apparently?
#chappie tour A photo posted by Brownsnout (@neillblomkamp) on
So that is the news on the Aliens front. I’m totally stoked about Blompkamp coming on board. D9 was huge. And I think he will just kill it from a production quality and directing standpoint. The only risk is that the script isn’t tight enough he’ll run it right off the rails like he did on Elysium. He’s even recently admitted that he screwed up because of the script:
I feel like, ultimately, the story is not the right story. I still think the satirical idea of a ring, filled with rich people, hovering above the impoverished Earth, is an awesome idea. I love it so much, I almost want to go back and do it correctly. But I just think the script wasn’t… I just didn’t make a good enough film is ultimately what it is. I feel like I executed all of the stuff that could be executed, like costume and set design and special effects very well. But, ultimately, it was all resting on a somewhat not totally formed skeletal system, so the script just wasn’t there; the story wasn’t fully there.
Read more from that interview over on Uproxx
But I guarantee that won’t happen this time around with Alien. Fox won’t let it happen again. Ridley Scott, who is producing, won’t let it happen again. I personally think that since Sigourney is involved, Scott is on board and we now have Blompkamp? It’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.
The only other news I have on the movie front? Oh just a little thing. Apparently Harrison Ford has just signed on for the sequel of Blade Runner. Yeah, that’s right. Decker is coming back. As I reported in other posts here, there has been a script that predicated his coming back, that has been written and has been waiting for a commitment from Harrison for a while now. But only just today did we get that response. And now, I can officially die happy. Literally.
The script was written by one of the first Blade Runner’s co-writers, Hampton Fancher, and Michael Green (Green Lantern) using an idea that the former came up with director Ridley Scott, who helmed the original movie. Principal photography will begin in 2016, according to Deadline. But does Harrison like the script? Well apparently Ridley Scott said that Ford had read the script and he had said, ‘Wow, this is the best thing I’ve ever read,’ So Ridley thinks he might just have magic in a bottle here – “I’m not just doing a sequel with lots of action and see how far we can go with the special effects because you can’t really. Blade Runner kind of landed on a somehow very credible future. And it’s very difficult to change that because it’s been so influential with everything else.” Oh, and by the way, Scott finished his comments about the sequel with a mind blowing, “And we’ll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.” Wait what?! hahah. Talk about throw away gold!
Anyway, super cool. So, let’s try this out, see how it feels, Blade Runner 2. Ooooh. That feels good. Blade Runner 2. Blade Runner 2. Man. I can get used to that. I’ve talked about the fact that most people don’t even realize that Decker is a robot before here on this blog. So, it will be really really shocking to most people when they finally cover that territory with more resolve. And I bet many people will be like WHAT?! THEY JUST RUINED THE FRANCHISE. When it was fact all along. But whatever. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Its going to be a good next couple of years for the movie world. Starwars Sequels (yes, I love not saying Prequels anymore), Blade Runner Sequel(s?) and now we have a proper ending to the Alien movies coming? Freaking-fantastic.