A lot of movies have come and bombed this summer, and it doesn’t look like the hemorrhaging’s going to stop any time soon. At the same time, one movie that looks very promising is Elysium, director Neil Blomkamp’s follow up to his acclaimed District 9.
Elysium certainly looks very promising, and it looks like a great sci-fi story for today’s generation. Perhaps it could even be a throw back to the darker, more cynical sci-fi flicks of the ‘70’s like Soylent Green and Logan’s Run. Whether it can improve the overall box office picture or not remains to be seen, but Variety tells us that Sony is certainly counting on Elysium to deliver. (Sony had to suffer one of the most embarrassing stiffs of this season, After Earth, along with White House Down, which also didn’t deliver.)
Blomkamp has a lot riding on the film too. District 9 cost $35 million, but with Elysium he’s in the big Hollywood budget range of $120 million. And perhaps with so many people out there still struggling since the collapse of the economy, Elysium may be a blockbuster that people could actually relate to.
As Blomkamp told Variety, “Elysium in a certain sense, isn’t a science fiction film. It’s a film about contemporary Earth. It’s just showing it to you differently.” Then again, the most effective science fiction movies have used the genre to get an important message through. It certainly worked for The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Twilight Zone, and more.
The film certainly looks incredible, and Titan Books is also putting out an art of Elysium book will be available on August 6 wherever books are sold these days.
