Image Credit: Matt Kent/WireImage
Sharlto Copley is teaming up with Neill Blomkamp for a third time.
The South African actor will play the lead role in Blomkamp’s next film, Chappie, Copley’s reps tell EW. Copley first teased the news in brief Facebook post this weekend.
Blomkamp is keeping details about the project largely under wraps, but he has described it as “a science-fiction comedy” in an “unusual setting.” Details on Copley’s character are also still under wraps. READ FULL STORY »
First, check out the new trailer for the upcoming sci-fi movie Elysium from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp below — we have been waiting since last year’s Comic-Con for a full scale look at the film, which imagines the rich escaping to a space station called Elysium, leaving a poverty-stricken Earth behind. Then see below for answers to your burning questions about the Matt Damon-starrer, which will be released in theaters on August 9.
READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: PATRICIA THOM/GEISLER-FOTOPRESS/DPA /LANDOV
Matt Damon — via satellite from Berlin — joined Elysium star Sharlto Copley, producer Simon Kinberg, and writer/director Neill Blomkamp in Hollywood on Monday to talk about the highly-anticipated film and gave away more than a few secrets about the upcoming sci fi flick in the process.
Damon commended fanboys and girls for using “excellent judgement” to take their lunch hour and enjoy the world premiere of the trailer for his summer film Elysium.
The film, (we were treated to the trailer as well as a 10-minute sizzle reel) is visually stunning. The backbone of the story is that the very rich left earth to enjoy a life free from disease, war, and poverty on the space station Elysium. Everyone else is left on Earth, and it’s an earth transformed into miles and miles of shantytown slums.
Elysium, the off-planet paradise, was shot on location in Canada. Future Earth was shot in Mexico City, which according to Blomkamp is famous for pre-meditated kidnappings.
READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Kimberley French
The Project: Elysium
The Panel: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, writer-director Neill Blomkamp, producer Simon Kinberg
Footage Screened: Blomkamp prefaced the screening admitting that the only time he’s comfortable with the “salesmanship” aspect of his job is when he is screening footage at Comic-Con for true fans. And even though almost all of the visual effects were very much in the rough stages, he did not skimp on delivering some tasty new footage.
It’s 2154. Earth, explains some title cards, is “diseased, polluted, and vastly over-populated.” It’s a wasteland, packed so tight with people that roofs of major skyscrapers have been converted into slums. So the very wealthy have escaped to Elysium, a vast, circular space station in a far orbit around Earth where there is no poverty, no sickness, and no war. Over this explanation, we see a model-perfect woman in a palatial home getting scanned for, and cured of, cancer, in a matter of seconds. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Michael N. Todaro/FilmMagic.com
, director Neill Blomkamp’s first movie since 2009′s District 9, is a project that remains shrouded in mystery despite a high-profile cast that includes Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, and D9‘s Sharlto Copley. But not anymore, thanks to the sleuths over at Collider, who got their hands on a test-screening invitation that includes a detailed plot summary:
In the year 2159 two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster), a hard line government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max (Matt Damon) is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that if successful will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.
Sounds very WALL-E meets Land of the Dead, with loads of possible wink-wink parallels to modern-day issues. (Don’t you just love when sci-fi flicks have those?) Honestly, you had us at Jodie Foster as a “hard line government official” — it’s about time she took on a juicy bad-guy role. Elysium doesn’t come out until March 1, 2013, but odds are you’ll be hearing more about it long before then: The movie’s sneaky viral marketing campaign was already under way almost a year ago when a fake recruitment site for a tech company called Armadyne popped up online in July.
Related:
Kenny G, film composer? How Matt Damon led two filmmakers to a surprising doc about the smooth jazz superstar — VIDEO
Matt Damon postpones directing; Gus Van Sant steps in
Just as Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 follow-up, Elysium, is coming together, the South African director and Media Right Capital have announced his next-next project, Chappie. A spokesperson for MRC says that Chappie, whose plot is being as guarded as closely as Elysium‘s, will begin as soon as that science-fiction film is completed.
Read more:
Jodie Foster joins Matt Damon on ‘Elysium’
Matt Damon in talks for ‘Elysium’
Neill Blomkamp and Sharlto Copley reunite for ‘Elysium’
We live in an era of cut-and-paste, mix-and-match, sample-and-recontextualize pop culture. Just because a movie is blazingly original doesn’t mean that it has to be shy about what it borrows from the past. Quentin Tarantino is the unapologetic king of recombinant pop — the auteur as mix-master. And in District 9, the aliens-as-dispossessed-refugees sci-fi thriller that has already struck a huge chord with audiences, director Neill Blomkamp wears his influences lightly but proudly. What makes the movie mean something is that, like Kill Bill or The Matrix, it doesn’t feel like the sources it recalls; it doesn’t feel like any other movie you’ve seen. That said, when you watch District 9, it’s almost impossible to resist playing Spot the Reference/Influence/Allusion/Homage. I’ve listed half a dozen of the obvious ones. How many more can you find?
Alien Nation. The benign and cultish 1988 sci-fi movie, which was turned into a TV series just a year later, featured a race of extraterrestrial visitors who looked like friendly, wigless department-store mannequins with their brains worn on the outside. A far cry from D9‘s dreadlock-faced Praying Mantisoid thingies, to be sure — but the film highlighted the concept of aliens as entrenched outsiders living as second-class citizens, as the other, within human society. READ FULL STORY »
