10 Reasons You Shouldn't Get Excited About Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5

10. It Was Originally Just Sly Promotion For Chappie

It's no coincidence that Neill Blomkamp started sharing concept art for his fan-baiting Alien project a couple of weeks before his latest movie hit cinemas. The artificial intelligence film hadn't got much hype surrounding it at the time (the March release date certainly didn't help), so not only did the Alien idea make Chappie a bit more high profile, it would ideally turn it into something of a must-see; it was a test reel for Alien 5. What better way to get the hard sci-fi fans Neill burned with Elysium back on board than with the promise he was still one of them? Of course, with this reasoning in mind, it begs the question of whether Alien 5 is actually developed in any way, or just a basic concept. Such a cynical trick probably wasn't the origin of the idea of Alien 5 (Sigourney Weaver and Blomkamp probably had plenty of time to discuss it on the set of Chappie given how little the actress does) and its subsequent greenlighting can't have been orchestrated in a way to help the current release's box office (Alien's at a completely different studio), but Blomkamp' timing when releasing the pictures on Instagram is just too convenient for him not to be wanting to increase the value of his stock. How much of a boost this ultimately had on Chappie's box office is unclear (most online viral marketing tricks have minimal impact), but curiosity views could very well end up helping to movie actually make a small profit.