3. Any other ideas?

Nursing their wounds from the collapse of the Halo film, Jackson and partner/wife Fran Walsh decided they didn’t want to lose the young talent they’d been nurturing.

“HALO collapsed and this film was born out of that,” reveals Blomkamp.

“It's really Peter and Fran Walsh's idea. They said, 'We like you being down in New Zealand, you know everyone at Weta so let us get another film going for you and we'll protect you and shield you.'

Fran said, 'What about Alive In Jo’burg as your first feature?' And I went, 'Yeah!'"

Shot a few years ago, the original short Joburg was filmed on the run by the director as a faux style look at aliens landing in South Africa.

While he didn’t tell his interviewees that he was making a piece about actual aliens, the helmer wasn’t out to fool people, just get honest reactions.

“I was not intentionally trying to deceive the people we interviewed.  

“I was just trying to get the most completely real and genuine answers.  In essence, there is no difference except that in my film we had a group of intergalactic aliens as opposed to illegal aliens.”   



The plot, which sees the creatures’ ship arrive powerless on Earth, holding thousands of starving drones, became the basis for District 9, which Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell began scripting.

They latched on to the idea of Wikus Van De Merwe, a lowly employee of the corporation assigned to manage (and ultimately evict) the alien refugees.

And as the story developed, the pair needed a focus among the creatures, too, fleshing out Christopher Johnson – their conceit is that MNU gave all the drones a human name to help them assimilate – and his son, little CJ.

But while they had Joburg as a major selling point, Blomkamp and his team still needed a proof of concept…

Next: Testing times