Posted in: 20th Century Studios, Disney, Movies | Tagged: 20th century studios, alien, alien franchise, neill blomkamp

Neill Blomkamp on How the Cancelled Alien Film Changed His Career

Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp gets candid on how the scrapped Alien film was one of the most challenging moments of his career so far.

In Hollywood, franchise films go through a lot of variations. There are new directors, screenwriters, actors, and producers, all vying to contribute to the longevity of a story in some capacity.

Unfortunately, the ideas with the greatest potential aren't always the films that end up getting made, just like Neill Blomkamp's impassioned pitch for Alien 5. Now, years after its tragic dissolution, the filmmaker is expressing his feeling about the scrapped movie and how it impacted his thoughts on the industry.

Neill Blomkamp on His Hardest Career Moment (So Far)

During an interview with Empire Magazine (first reported by Screen Rant), Blomkamp revealed that while there's been a few reimagined projects in his career – there's at least one specific sting that he associates with a fan-favorite sci-fi franchise that completely changed the game for audiences and filmmakers. "The stuff that's hit me the hardest in my own career are the projects that didn't get made. Alien, predominantly."

When then discussing how he chose to step away from Hollywood as a result of his personal experiences, the director tells the magazine that the only way he'd be able to have maintained that style of filmmaking was if "I was more of a McDonald's, Burger King-type studio-lackey director that makes one film every year or every one and a half years… Naturally, I'm an artist who doesn't play the Hollywood game. When I left, I thought about things and came back with a different point of view about how I'm going to approach Hollywood."

When Blomkamp previously discussed the film being scrapped in 2021, he  jokingly shared, "It's possible that [Ridley Scott] watched Chappie, and he was like, this guy can't do Alien, so let's just go ahead and move on." Before more seriously adding, "I also felt bad for Sigourney [Weaver] because she was really into what I had brought forward. I felt like [for] 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."

It's definitely a bummer that we never received a return for Weaver via the Blomkamp film, but that's the industry for you!

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