Attack the Block sequel: Joe Cornish & John Boyega working on follow-up

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Ten years ago today, Attack the Block premiered at the SXSW festival and writer/director Joe Cornish had no idea how the audience would react. "We hadn't really shown it to a broad audience, let alone an American-international audience," Cornish told Entertainment Weekly recently. "So, for me, it was a shot in the dark. I remember having no idea how people would react to it at all. When I showed it to the cast, they just laughed because they were so tickled by seeing themselves onscreen, pretending to be these characters. They just spent the whole film laughing and I was like, that's not how you're supposed to react! So, that was a bit weird. I had no idea what the response was going to be [at SXSW]. No idea at all." The sci-fi horror comedy followed a teenage gang in South London (led by a young John Boyega) as they're forced to defend their block from an alien invasion.

Attack the Block wound up becoming a cult classic, and fans have eagerly been awaiting any news of a possible sequel. Well, when asked by Entertainment Weekly if there was any chance of revisiting the Attack the Block universe, Joe Cornish said, "We're working on it at the moment. John Boyega was round at my place a few weeks ago and we sat in the garden — socially distanced — talking about story ideas until it was so dark we couldn't see each other. So, yeah, we're working on that." Who knows whether a sequel to Attack the Block will actually materialize, but it's a project that both Joe Cornish and John Boyega have remained passionate about over the past decade.

This isn't the first time that Joe Cornish has teased a potential Attack the Block sequel, as he told the Script Apart podcast last year that John Boyega and himself have "had ideas [for a sequel] since after the first one, but obviously we’ve both been busy doing different things. In a weird way, kinda, the longer you leave it the more interesting it is. So that’s what I’ll say." The film remains a favourite of mine, particularly it's unique aliens (the big alien gorilla wolf motherf**kers), and I would absolutely welcome a sequel.