Neill Blomkamp Doesn’t Want to Talk About Alien: ‘It’s Hard to Define How Little I Care’

Neill Blomkamp has no interest in discussing his canceled Alien film.

Near the end of an interview with Uproxx, Blomkamp was being asked about Alien 5 and some production designs the Gran Turismo director shared over social media several years ago when he abruptly cut the conversation short.

“It’s hard to define how little I care about what happens with Alien,” Blomkamp said.

The conversation quickly circled back around to Gran Turismo. However, Blomkamp only provided a few more brief responses before he decided they had “spoken about it enough.” His publicist then interjected and ended the interview.

Neill Blomkamp and Alien 5: What happened?

Blomkamp, who also directed District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, signed a deal to make a new Alien film with 20th Century Fox in 2015. The film, however, was never fully developed and, in 2017, Ridley Scott (who directed 1979’s Alien) declared the project dead.

“There was never a script,” Scott told AlloCiné at the time. “It was an idea that evolved from, I believe, a 10-page pitch, and I was meant to be the producer on that. And it didn’t evolve. Fox decided that they didn’t want to do it and that was it.”

Blomkamp commented on the situation when speaking with The Guardian in 2021, saying, “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.”

Since then, the rights to Alien were acquired by Disney when the company purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019. A new Alien film starring Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu is now in the works from Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez and is currently expected to release on August 16, 2024.

Blomkamp, meanwhile, went on to direct Demonic in 2021 before tackling Gran Turismo, which releases theatrically in the United States on August 25, 2023.