District 9 director Neill Blomkamp regards collapse of Halo movie as the biggest stroke of luck in his career

By Dave Cook

District 9 and Elysium director Neill Blomkamp has cited the collapse of the Halo movie both he and Peter Jackson were set to collaborate on the biggest stroke of luck in his career. He has said that had the project not dissolved he wouldn’t have made District 9 and learned several life lessons along the way.

Speaking with LA Times Hero Complex, Blomkamp explained that after the Halo project was canned, Jackson sympathetically helped the director find funding for his own pet project District 9, which incidentally went on to be a commercial and critical success after release.

He said, “The luck is the fact that Peter and Fran let me make [‘District 9’] out of the ruins that were ‘Halo’. What happened out of that was learning to trust my ideas. If ‘Halo’ had come out and succeeded or failed, I wouldn’t have learned that.”

Once District 9 proved that Blomkamp knew how to manage his budget efficiently to create superb visual effects, other big studios started firing blockbuster projects his way, only to turn them down and stick to his own ideas.

“It’s getting to the point now where [his agency] WME just doesn’t send me stuff any more. It’s not because I think I’m better than any of that stuff. There are many franchises out there I would love to participate in. The problem is when you agree to do that, you take a lot of the control that you have over your own creative destiny away from yourself.”

Blomkamp is gearing up for the release of his new sci-fi flick Elysium, which looks pretty damn intriguing. What do you think of the above?

Thanks Hitfix.