Neil Blomkamp born September 17, 1979 in Johannesburg, South
Africa, is probably the best director you’ve never heard of before. He had been
trusted to take the reigns for creating a marketing spectacle for one of the
world’s biggest video game franchises, Halo. In 2007 created a set of short
films entitled “Landfall” which centered on the Halo Universe. Within these
short films he brought to life the best representation of Halo mythology even
showcasing some cool futuristic tech such as the Warthog driving vehicle
featured in the game to the screen. From that he was set to direct his first
feature film, which would’ve been a full-length Halo movie, produced by Peter
Jackson. The project collapsed after it couldn’t find funding for itself. http://goo.gl/eF65BO
The failed film left Blomkamp with a big hole to fill for
himself, so he decided to make the film District 9. Set in his home country of
South Africa, more specifically in the Johannesburg Township area, it featured
aliens living among humans and being mistreated as if to parallels how blacks
were treated during apartheid. This gained Neill huge recognition in the film
industry and gained him 4 Academy Award Nominations including Best Picture. His
new film Elysium is set to open to good box office numbers and is already at
$30.4 million for the weekend.
Neill Blomkamp is a visionary director and is a real force
to be reckoned with. He is also very outspoken with his stance on not wanting
to direct DC and Marvel superhero characters along with Star Trek or Star Wars
franchises. It seems that he doesn’t want to get trapped in to reigning in his
artistic vision in order to fulfill the marketing and merchandising needs for a
big studio. http://goo.gl/BbLWb7
He says that he is an artist and wants to be left alone. He is on
track to becoming very much like another outstanding director namely Chris
Nolan of Batman fame. Who also started out small and built his way up the
ladder by creating stories that fascinated him and were visually captivating as
well. Being able to work on a budget and still crank out a very good film that
can make back its budget and more is a trait Hollywood studios look for in a
director nowadays. Neill is one of those directors who can make just as big a
splash creating his own stories just as if he were directing someone elses
vision and that is very rare. They say lightning never strikes the same place
twice but I think we are witnessing it now in
the movie theater.
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