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A not so long while ago director Neil Blomkamp convinced the owners of the Alien franchise to let him direct a brand new film in the series, based almost exclusively on some curious concept art Blomkamp uploaded to instagram. But now, this somewhat ill-advised movie is being put on hold through the power of original Alien director Ridley Scott.

Scott is moving forward with his (also ill-advised) sequel to Prometheus, and so he needs full control of the Alien trademark. Blomkamp’s take doesn’t appear to be canceled, but he has commented he will be moving on to other projects.

This is a fairly strange turn of events that’s come about in the past few years. Scott’s films had been on the decline for a while, and Blomkamp appeared to be a fresh newcomer with a great debut and a bit of a sophomore slump.* Now, with Blomkamp’s underachieving Chappie and Scott’s new phenomenon with The Martian, one is slowly becoming irrelevant while the other is coming back into the spotlight.

Either way, this is somewhat disappointing news. I think Blomkamp’s style could work well within an established franchise, but now he’s likely back to an original piece that is likely to be a little heavy-handed and underwritten. Whereas Scott has shown he can still make true quality films with The Martian. We now have both filmmakers returning to poor habits.

*I think Elysium gets a harsh rap.

Via The Verge

                              

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Andrew Walsh

Andrew Walsh is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer based in LA. He co-directed his first feature in high school, is an avid juggler, and is a descendant of director Raoul Walsh. One of those might not be true.

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