I imagine
Neill Blomkamp is finding it much easier to cast his sophomore sci-fi effort
Elysium on the back of his rookie film District 9 having been recognised as a Best Picture nominee last year. It's been announced by
Deadline that movie star
Jodie Foster has joined Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley in the mysterious, sociopolitical, slightly bigger budget dose of science fiction - which we still don't know what on Earth (or outside of Earth) it's about. Foster doesn't star in a lot of movies these days and you have to go back to 1997 for her last sci-fi movie (Robert Zemeckis' Contact) - which incidentally is the only film she's done in the genre until now. Media Rights Capital are financing Elysium and once the whole cast is in place, they will shop around studio's (easy enough with this cast) and hopefully some plot details will leak. Damon's got Cameron Crowe's
We Bought A Zoo filming in the spring, then Soderbergh's
Liberace in the summer... so don't expect this one to roll before camera's until the end of the year. We are big fans of District 9 around these parts and we certainly admire Blomkamp's desire for an original project over the dozen or so franchise properties that came his way this time last year. Looking forward to hearing more about it...