Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo races into theaters this week. It’s a video game adaptation, but an interesting twist on one. It’s also a change of pace for the filmmaker, as he’s known for his career in sci-fi movies with social messages. Blomkamp hit instant recognition for his debut with District 9, and his filmography since has been divisive. However, the filmmaker had set his sights on a couple of franchises that he was once attached to, then both ultimately fell through. Most famously, he was to helm an Alien 5 sequel off the strength of his proposed concept art. Then, he was slated to make a direct sequel to Robocop until that project fell by the wayside as well.
His Alien 5 was jettisoned in favor of Ridley Scott, the director of the original 1979 film, when he decided to pursue his sequel to Prometheus, which also served as an Alien prequel. Blomkamp recently gave an interview with Uproxx when promoting Gran Turismo when the subject of his Alien 5 came up. Then, the subject of his Alien 5 went away just as quickly. The interviewer started their inquiry, “Alright, I saw Walter Hill came out recently and said Disney wants to go a different direction with Alien. I enjoyed the production designs you posted on Twitter…” to which Blomkamp interrupted, “It’s hard to define how little I care about what happens with Alien.”
The interviewer abided, saying, “Okay. Well, I think you just defined it pretty well, just with that statement.” Blomkamp bluntly responded, “Yeah. So I guess I don’t want to talk about that either. I want to talk about Gran Turismo or we shouldn’t talk about…” The interview awkwardly fizzles out from there as the interviewer struggles to recover and Blomkamp felt he had given enough information about Gran Turismo.
It’s evident that the discussion of that particular film would be a sore subject, as Blomkamp mentioned years ago when he reflected on the heartbreak of the situation with The Guardian, “It’s possible that Ridley watched Chappie and he was like, this guy can’t do Alien so let’s just go ahead and move on.” He would also express that he “felt bad for Sigourney 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. What doesn’t make sense is that I feel like it’s what the audience wanted, so it’s strange because Fox would never really turn down money.”