Neill Blomkamp Says New Horror Sci-Fi Project Comes Next; ‘The Hobbit’ Casting And Scheduling Without Studio Greenlight?

The talk of the summer has without doubt been Neill Blomkamp’s debut feature “District 9.” The former alm0st-“Halo” director stunned the world with his film which will probably be looked back on as the summer’s biggest pleasant surprise. So, sequel talk has dominated every interview with Blomkamp, right?

“Yeah I would totally make a sequel,” Blomkamp tells SciFiMoviePage. “[The studio] want one, they definitely want one. It’s just a case now what the hell it is… It could go a lot of different ways. It’s also, how do you — what happens to Wikus? How do you wrap that character up? Does he become human again? I’d have to really go and think about where the hell it goes.”

It’s kind of nice to know that he didn’t write the original with franchise in mind, truthfully. A more honest exploration of “where can this go now?” seems to be a more interesting challenge, rather than what you’ll see in say, “Sherlock Holmes,” which according to the script we read earlier this year ends with a pretty obvious and dangling McFranchise-open ending.

Blomkamp proved to be somewhat of an alien theorist in his interview, even going so far as self-criticizing his work and possibly talking himself into a new project. “I think that within the realm of a two-legged creature that’s roughly human size, [Alien depiction in ‘Distrct 9’] is probably the closest thing. But my actual philosophy on alien contact is that just they wouldn’t be like us at all and that it would make the oppression of them impossible. They’d be so much more technologically advanced than we were that if they came to our planet, it’d be on their terms. But it doesn’t make for a good movie, it makes for a good documentary which I should maybe make — on the real scientific thoughts on first contact.”

Before any “District 9” sequel though, Blomkamp revealed he will be digging into a new project which he describes as “horror, science-fiction, something around there.” “I will [be working on something] when I get back to Vancouver. I got a new science fiction idea, that’s fresh. I’m just writing it from the ground up. But it’s very early and I think that’ll be my next film…I’m pretty sure it’s set on another planet, it’s set way in the future.”

While Peter Jackson recently talked down his potential involvement in any ‘District’ sequels, Blomkamp expressed a strong desire to bring him back on board. “It would probably be called ‘District 10.’ But [Jackson] would totally be involved and I think that would be awesome ‘cos I love working with him. The new one I’m doing in Vancouver probably [won’t involve him] because his already got enough stuff he’s producing. He‘s watching ‘The Hobbit‘ right now…370 days of shooting starting in April. Well no, actually they‘re not even greenlit.”

So Jackson already has a schedule and potentially has already cast a Bilbo Baggins but still doesn’t have the green light? Something not going according to plan? At this year’s Comic-Con, Jackson explicitly confirmed that casting and scheduling on “The Hobbit” would not take place until the studio approved the script, green-lit the project and gave him his budget. Why green-lighting a sequel to a trilogy that made over a billion dollars is taking so long in the first place is beyond us but now they’re holding out on Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro? Probably in these economic times they’re still waiting on a final script and they’d love to give it the go-ahead.

“The Hobbit” is due to hit theaters over the course of two Christmases beginning in 2011. [SciFiMoviePage via AICN]