I was speaking to a bunch of friends last night and none of them had heard of District 9. That was not the answer I was looking for, considering I didn’t know what the frack it was either. Until now.
Produced by Peter Jackson, District 9 is the directorial debut of Jackson’s protege and South African born Neill Blomkamp. In this mysterious sci-fi flick, it seems that Johannesburg, South Africa has become a haven for refugees, both human and extraterrestrial.
Shot in a faux-documentary style, District 9 is slated for release August 14th, 2009. Check out the uncensored trailer below or watch it in HD at Apple.com.
From the teaser, I assume that the big-ass alien ship has run out of petrol and can’t leave the earth, so it begs the question – why would the visitors from outer space be forced to live in a shantytown when they could stay aboard their ship? There must be more to this and I’m very interested to find out.
The official website d-9.com with its media-rich interface allows you to either enter the human side or non-human side and provides a lot of information, most of which I don’t understand or know what to do with. I chose the non-human side and entered an obviously false alien ID. Alarm bells started ringing, things were scanned, I was told my connection was being monitored, and got redirected to some company called Multi-National United. The plot thickens…
[via Digital Citizen]
21 replies on “District 9: For Humans Only”
I’m absolutely dying to see it. I’ve always bemoaned the lack of good sci-fi originating from SA’s authors and film producers. All we’ve ever done are the happy-couple-on-the-farm and gangsters-in-township-type movies – it’ll be fantastic to see something that takes a cultural norm in SA, and builds on it like crazy.
I’m also hoping this’ll stir a few more projects to action…
~ Wogan
wow. That looks awesome. That website is brilliant
Never actually heard of it at all until I read about it here and saw that ad.
It looks really good!!
Im really eager to see this!!!!
I’ve been guilty of letting SA-made movies pass me by. This has definitely made me take note.
Incidentally, you can watch the trailer in HD at http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/district9/
The new “uncensored” trailer is now online,
this is slated as the biggest south african film ever made, appearing in all english speaking countries worldwide as one of Sony / Paramount’s big summer releases.
starring locals sharlto copley, who plays wikus van der merwe (yes, really) and jason cope, who plays all of the aliens.
going to be huge, a local film is finally trying out for hollywood.
Thanks will. I’ve updated the post to show the uncensored trailer.
The second trailer is out. Check it at YouTube.
this is going to be the shiz – a truly weird, yet rockadelic flick….
8-) :alien:
I :heart: Prawns! District 9 was a great movie, no doubt about it.
The Nigerians are not happy and have banned D-9. The information minister has written a letter to Sony asking for an apology and their bank details – OK, I made that last bit up ;-)
Read the article at the BBC.
I read about that. What knobs they are!
Its just a freakin movie!!!
Forgot to say, awesome movie, really enjoyed it. I hope they make a sequel!
Totally, dude. Like, the aliens secretly come back after recruiting help from all over the galaxy, descend on South Africa, breed like crazy, fight for the right to vote, and elect their own party into government – which then promptly deploys prawn ministers into key positions while draining the country of resources.
Something like that?
lol, I am living in this sequel you are talking about
of course there has to be a sequel!!
wikus needs to be rectified…
where there’s smoke there’s fire, and i’m sure the reaction can be pointed squarely at a guilty conscience.
anyway, i don’t remember south africans getting all upset when the saffers were the bad guys in lethal weapon 3 (i think it was the 3rd movie, or maybe the 2nd, can’t remember).
I agree, plus i don’t think any other country has ever complained about something like this, besides Kazakhstan over Borat and maybe China.
But there has been many movies where people could complain but haven’t.
I dunno, I really liked the ambiguous ending of D-9 and am pretty happy to leave it at that. I think the filmmakers need to tread carefully if they are considering a sequel – if Hollywood sinks its teeth into the project, I think it would cheapen whatever effect D-9 had.
i understand what you saying, maybe i am suffering from SA movie withdrawal. i think they made the ending like that because they might plan on making a sequel. but who knows, it might be a while. i still dunno how they managed to make a hollywood blockbuster right under our noses and barely anyone knew about it. kudos to them!
Yes, here’s another vote for no sequel. It was a magic movie – one of the best I’ve seen, and adding to it will spoil it. I’ll just hold out for Wikus as Howling Mad Murdock in the A-Team movie. I wonder if he’ll keep the accent.
@cheese_za: I think Blomkamp mentioned he was open to doing a sequel if the first movie was successful. Given the amount of interest, I’d think District 10 would have to be imminent. I don’t know if you saw it, but Cinemablend have a few thoughts on what they’d like to see in the sequel – LINK.
@Tim: Totally! D-9 is definitely the best film I have seen in quite a while. It stands out from the others as I actually cared about what happened to the characters.
Oh, and Quick Stop Entertainment has an interesting article on how D-9 could be this generation’s Robocop – LINK.