Neill Blomkamp suddenly has some extra time on his hands. Blomkamp was supposed to be working on a new Alien movie, but that got delayed when Ridley Scott’s Prometheus 2 morphed into Alien: Paradise Lost, pushing Blomkamp’s take on the universe back to 2017 (at the very earliest).
Well, it seems Fox wants to keep Blomkamp busy while his Alien movie is up in the air, and are in talks to have him write and direct The Gone World, a new sci-fi thriller. The Gone World is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Sweterlitsch. The book actually hasn’t been released yet, so all we know as of now is that it’s a “sci-fi time-travel procedural,” which certainly sounds like the kind of thing Neill Blomkamp might direct. As for Sweterlitsch, he’s already sold another book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, to TriStar, and numerous studios were reportedly chasing The Gone World, so clearly this guy must have something going for him.
If Blomkamp takes this job, it will be interesting to see how he adapts to working with another person’s material. Honestly, it may be exactly what he needs. He’s still fantastic with action and visuals, and his movies usually have plenty of good lines, the problem is the underlying structure is usually a mess. Having source material to work from may help that. And hey, if Blomkamp is going to do an Alien movie, he’d better get used to working in somebody else’s universe.
via Deadline
