(Perhaps inherent spoilers for District 9 follow.)
Not even a week after Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 has been a success unforeseen by mainstream audiences, the film’s director is talking up a possible sequel.
Blomkamp revealed to Fangoria Radio that he’d “love to make a sequel, because it’s so creatively rewarding to me; there’s just something about [the story] … It’s my background mixed with the science fiction that I loved. I’d really like to go back to the world of District 9 —which, without Sharlto [Copley]’s character, would be a very different kind of movie. So I think automatically the two of us will be reunited again, should the public decide that this film is something they want to see and it’s successful.”
This statement is troublesome. While I loved District 9 and consider it one of the best films of the summer, the fact that the film ends on a note that could be carried on into a sequel doesn’t mean it should. I love the ambiguity of the grace note Blomkamp chose to leave us with, and I feel it adds a gravity to the film as a whole, as a fantastic science fiction piece.
It’s also troublesome because it implies that Blomkamp is not entirely interested in approaching other worthwhile projects, and I’d hate to see his talent go to waste. However, the director did reveal that he’s “actually got an idea now for the next film I want to do, which is [another] science fiction movie, but the idea of a full-on horror is incredibly high on my list. This kind of horror/science fiction genre—I want to be in that world, that’s where I’d like to be.”
This news is better. The horror genre is infamous for raising incredibly talented filmmakers to be harvested by studios to move onto larger, more mainstream products. If Blomkamp is willing to lend his immense talents to the genre for at least a while longer, the film world will be better for it.
