District 9, directed by South African visual effects prodigy Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), looks set to become South Africa’s first global box office smash hit when Sony Pictures release the documentary-style sci-fi in America on 14 August 2009.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the trailer, hailed by Wired as this summer’s best, had already been viewed over 21 million times by June, while innovative bus-stop advertisements are currently visible across America’s 15 biggest cities, featuring apartheid-style warning signs with messages like “Bus bench for humans only” or “Beware! Non-human secretions may corrode metal.” Within two weeks of the posters, which encourage citizens to “report non-humans,” Sony had received 33 000 phone calls and 2 500 voice messages about alien sighting. www.d-9.com, District 9’s website, is the sort you can lose yourself in for days.

Neill, who turns 30 in September, wrote the story with Terri Tatchell as an expansion of his short film, Alive in Joburg, which was also shot in South Africa. Thirty years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa’s District 9 as the world’s nations argued over what to do with them. Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens’ welfare – they will receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens’ awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA. The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe (Alive in Joburg producer Sharlto Copley in a break-through performance), contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable – he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Ostracised and friend-less, there is only one place left for him to hide: District 9.

Neill started working as a professional animator on e.tv’s Deadtime at 16, with Sharlto and Simon Hansen of Inspired Minority. He left South Africa at 18 for Canada, where he worked for The Embassy and Rainmaker, cracking an Emmy nomination as the lead animator on the Dark Angel pilot. Signing with Spy Films in Canada and Ridley Scott & Associates in America, he moved into directing commercials. In 2004, he was recognised as one of five directors to watch at the First Boards Awards and featured in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase at Cannes. In 2005, he received the VES award for outstanding VFX in his dancing car commercial for Citroen, Alive With Technology. Peter Jackson handpicked him to direct a feature adaptation of Halo, the record-breaking XBox game that has sold over 25 million copies worldwide. When Halo imploded in 2007, the collaboration continued onto District 9.

The eight-week South African shoot, which coincided with the out-breaks of xenophobia across the country, was supervised by Michael Murphey and production managed by Steven St. Arnaud through Kalahari Pictures, which brought the project in on schedule and under budget.

“This truly is a South African project,” says Steven. “It’s a South African director, a South African cast speaking with South African accents, and a 90% South African crew.”

Michael expects the film to launch a number of South African careers internationally, including those of Sharlto and fellow lead Jason Cope, who was a location manager on Alive in Joburg.

He also commended Jaco Snyman and Graham Press from The Creature Shop, Grant Hulley from Pyranha Stunts & VFX, Max Pullman from MXFX, art director Emilia Roux and costume designer Dianna Cilliers, all of whom stood out among imported production designers and make up and visual effects specialists who worked on The Lord of the Rings.

Steven says, “District 9 is totally unique. It still has all the explosions and aliens and spaceships and guns that you expect to see in a sci-fi movie, but it also has Neill’s personality stamped all over it, and that whole gritty South African feel to it. Neill’s all about realism. The explosions and gunshots and hits – he makes every-thing more organic; instead of having a big explosion, bullets hit more like dust, like they actually would. It’s not this glossy Hollywood film you’ve seen a million times before, or another comic book adaptation or a remake of a TV series. It’s not something you’ve seen before.”

Ster-Kinekor releases District 9 in South Africa on 28 August 2009.

Watch the trailer here.

Watch Neill's short film that inspired it all here.

Kevin Kriedemann