District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp Has an Idea For District 10

Neill Blomkamp says he has a "cool idea" for the sci-fi sequel.

Neill Blomkamp recently stopped by the IGN office to discuss new film Chappie, and while the UK podcast team had him cornered, we quizzed the writer-director about District 9. and whether or not he’ll ever make a sequel to the sci-fi classic.

“I have an idea for District 10, which is really cool” Blomkamp revealed. “The problem is I feel like Chappie is the end of three films that have a similar stylistic approach to them. Chappie is the odd one out in that is has no socio-political underpinnings. It doesn’t have my experiences as a kid in South Africa incorporated into it. And Elysium – although it doesn’t have my experiences as a kid in South Africa, it has the same notion of oppressor in the elites, and the large population base beneath it. And Chappie doesn’t, but they are still part of a trilogy. So moving forward I would love to realise this idea of District 10 – I have every intention to do it, I just need to find the right time to do it – to not go back to Johannesburg and shoot something similar, yet.”

Then, somewhat surprisingly, Blomkamp admitted that said idea is a completely new one, and that when he finished District 9 he had no clue where the story was heading.

“I had no idea to the point that I remember walking into Peter Jackson’s office, which was down the hall from the editing room I was in. The edit was locked and the movie was basically done, and I walked into his office and was like “You know that the ending of the film is for a sequel?” And he may have known that all along, but I didn’t, so he was like “Mmm, yeah, it is sort of, isn’t it?” And then the film came out and I left New Zealand. But no, there was zero, pre-meditated… I was not hinting at anything, and nothing was thought of.”

So while D9 ended on something of a cliffhanger, Blomkamp himself saw it as a standalone movie. Until now…

“It was a completely self-contained story about the Nazi becoming the Holocaust victim, basically. It was the oppressor becoming the oppressed. And when it’s based on a character like that, it ends on that character. The inadvertent world creation that came with it, which to me is my perfect kind of thing that I love – having a bunch of weird alien weapons in the back of a shack that you can discover – that’s just ripe for creative insanity, so it took a few years to process what that could be. And I think that the story that I have now is what I would want to see as a fan of the first film, I think. I know I would want to see it – I assume other people would. It’s good man!”

So do you want to see District 10? Let us know in the comments below, while clear your diary for Friday as that’s when Chappie the movie hits screens and when our extended interview with Blomkamp hits the site in the shape of the IGN UK podcast.

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and now feels somewhat duped by the ending of D9. He can be found talking nonsense on both Twitter and MyIGN .