One of the best films of last year was Neil Bloomkamp’s directorial feature debut, ‘District 9’, a relatively low budget (if you can call $40 million that) sci-fi allegory set in Apartheid era South Africa.

‘District 9’ was produced by Peter Jackson, the man behind ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. Jackson arranged the financing after viewing a short film by Bloomkamp; the same short which served as a blueprint for the ideas to be found in ‘District 9’.

Peter Jackson had all but adopted Bloomkamp as his prodigy. He hired the Canadian (ex-pat South African) to helm a mega-budget big-screen adaptation of the hit video game, ‘Halo.’

‘Halo’ stalled in preproduction and – as we speak – is stuck in development hell. In the meantime, Jackson has been at work on an adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’, which tells the story of Bilbo Baggins and the events leading up to the ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

Given that Peter Jackson probably feels guilty following the lapse of ‘Halo’, perhaps it’s not surprising that Bloomkamp’s name has entered the mix as Guillermo del Torro’s replacement for ‘The Hobbit.’

Unconfirmed reports (meaning rumours) suggest that despite a conflicting schedule, Bloomkamp has actually put his name forward for the job himself. He’s begging Jackson for the job.

Whilst MGM and Warner would just love Jackson to acquiesce and return to the director’s chair for ‘The Hobbit’, instead of hiring someone else, the extraordinary pressure and workload of directing the ‘LOTR’ trilogy – followed by making ‘King Kong’ straight afterwards – has taken its toll on Jackson. These days he’s even more adverse to directing than Francis Ford Coppola was after making ‘Apocalypse Now’.  But he might yet be persuaded, if no-one else will do it, simply for the sake of saving the project.

On paper, Bloomkamp would be the next best choice for the job. He and Jackson have a trusted working relationship as producer and director; and Bloomkamp has showed himself to be a talented film maker with ‘District 9’.

‘The Hobbit’ will be split into two (probably three hour plus) movies, so whilst it will be a much, much bigger challenge than ‘District 9’, the material is virtually guaranteed to be successful, as long as the direction is merely serviceable.

And if it’s better than serviceable, we should be in for a treat.

Just as long as something gets made...

Print E-mail TCM Blog RSS

Del.icio.us Digg Newsvine Reddit

Comments