District 9 Director Believes a D9 Video Game 'Would Be Fascinating'

District 9 was a rather quirky Hollywood box-office hit, but it was a hit regardless. It was a sci-fi flick that presented a human-alien conflict, but it's not really what you would have expected it to be. While the film did eventually provide a few explosions to earn its admission fee for the average viewer, and a few nice action sequences as well, most of it relied on the concept of living standards and interaction between different social classes. So, while a sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster with a deep story but with enough action to go on as well might sound like the perfect base for a video-game tie-in, the movie's director doesn't really think this is going to happen.

Asked by the Los Angeles Times about his opinion on a District 9 video game, Neill Blomkamp said that, “I definitely have input into it. Ultimately the person with the most control is Peter [Jackson, producer of 'District 9'], but I for sure would have some influence over whether that happens or not.” But as it turns out, Blomkamp himself is a gamer, and as such, he is aware of the disasters that mixing the two genres usually leads to.

“The idea of 'District 9' as a video game stresses me out a little bit because games based on movies rarely work. And movies based on games don't work -- I don't know what's up with that,” he said. Which is a bit of a contradiction with reality if we think about the fact that he wanted to direct a Halo movie, which of course falls into the game-inspired movies that he believes “rarely work.” But apparently, this contradiction is the very reason why the movie seemed like something he could actually pull off, considering his background.

His past experience with computer graphics is exactly what got him excited about such possibilities, and, while District 9 The Video Game is music to his ears, he believes it's better to remain in the perfect state of dreams. “But anyway, 'District 9' as a game would be fascinating. And I don't want to see it happen for any sort of corporate reason or profit thing. I used to be involved in computer graphics and I love virtual environments. That's why I like video games, really.”

“And I think a virtual environment of the slums of Soweto is an appealing idea to me. The weapons are cool, too. I photographed the film in a way that isn't that different than video-game perspective in some parts. So a game would be interesting to me. There's nothing happening with it though,” Blomkamp concluded.