Very few films with no star power from first-time directors have ever been preceded by the deafening buzz that is building around District 9. After a Comic-Con screening that had audience members and critics raving, articles started popping up in the New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and pretty much everywhere with any kind of movie coverage. The set-up for the film is simple – aliens landed on Earth decades ago and we put them in a slum in South Africa. When tensions build with humans, the Multi-National United Company is tasked with moving the millions of aliens from District 9 to their new home. That’s all we dare say without serious spoilers.

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MovieRetriever: Tell me about the first time that you saw the completed film with an audience.

NEILL BLOMKAMP: Comic-Con. It was pretty cool. That was the first time that I had seen it with any group of people. It was a heightened experience because there were fans and journalists. It was a bit nuts. You get to a point where you just don't know. I was like, "Holy sh*t. This could go south." There are parts of it that are not very traditional and it's either going to work or it's not going to work. That screening was really, probably very good for me. It set the tone for weeks of more press-related stuff and I felt like I was coming from a place where fans of the genre LIKE the movie. It changes things. Because then you feel like you're speaking about something that isn't tripe, that people actually seem to like. So, it was like "Thank God."

MovieRetriever: The momentum since then has been incredible. Articles in the New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly. Has any of it been overwhelming?

BLOMKAMP: I'm not overwhelmed by it, but I am ... the feeling that I get is a huge sense of relief. I feel grateful that the last two and a half years have been spent on something that's paying off. It's a sense of relief. I feel like I can count my lucky stars.

MovieRetriever: I just spoke to Sharlto and he asked me to pass along a question.

BLOMKAMP: Ooh, this is interesting.

MovieRetriever: He wants to know why you both love AND hate Johannesburg.

BLOMKAMP: I knew he'd say that. I would send you back with "Why do you love South Africa?" if it was the other way around. Well, I think it's very simple actually. If I wasn't even in the film industry, there's a range of topics that I'm besotted with. If you forget filmmaking ... things that interest me. One of them is cities and their tendency to be powder keg, volatile, cities, like Rio or Johannesburg. There's a bunch. That interest was formed because I grew up in Jo’burg, but it's almost taken on a life of its own since I moved to Canada. So, the reason that I love Johannesburg is that when I'm there, it's the most alive city that I've ever been to. It feels like you're standing on a knife edge. I love science fiction and I love weird, socio-political craziness. All of these topics that I feel will become more important to the first world in the coming years – wealth discrepancy, gated communities. I feel like I'm actually IN the future in Jo’burg. I have the sense when I'm there that it's a scaled-down version of Blade Runner. You're driving on the highway and there are choppers going overhead that are owned by private security companies that are tracking GPS signals from hijacked cars. All they do all day is track down hijacked vehicles. Every single house in the suburbs has an electric fence. Every single house. It just feels like this place that is absolutely electric and futuristic. And it's my version of futuristic. Not Hollywood. It's where it's actually going. That's why I love it.

And the reason I hate it is because if I go there with my girlfriend or my daughter and I have family members who still live there ... it's so inhumanly violent that I don't want to be there, but it's also what gives it this electricity and this knife-edge situation.

MovieRetriever: You said in there that you're a science fiction fan. Why has 2009 been such a resurgent year for the genre?

BLOMKAMP: I don't really know. It's true. I'm very happy that it seems to be because it is my favorite genre. If anything, I think it's because there's been such a drought. I made this film because it was something I wanted to see. I think that's why filmmakers make films because it's the kind of movie they want to watch. Maybe there's a feeling that in a drought-stricken environment, particularly in this genre, there's a feeling that people want to participate. All I want to do is making films in the same genre as my favorite filmmakers and my favorite films. If I'm able to start contributing and be a part of that world, I'm the happiest guy in the world.

MovieRetriever: Who are those filmmakers and what films?

BLOMKAMP: I've been thinking about this lately. The ones that had the biggest effect on me are the ones that I was young enough to be highly impressionable but old enough to sort of grasp what was going on. For me, at my youngest, around ten is when I saw Alien. It scared me but it made me want to get into films. Obviously, when you're like ten, you have no idea how films are even made. All I knew is that I drew about 600,000 illustrations of H.R. Giger's Alien. It's from ten until about fifteen is what solidified ... and, within that range, was Alien and Aliens were the two biggest one by far. James Cameron's Aliens had a life-altering effect on me. So, it was the two first Alien films and then I saw Blade Runner was I was like fifteen and I was obsessed with that. Those three. I saw 2001 when I was younger but then I saw it again when I was sixteen and that had a massive effect. I didn't realize it until I was a bit older but the first two Star Wars, especially Empire Strikes Back, I had been watching pretty much every afternoon for most of my childhood. That has to be in there and I think had more effect on me than I knew at the time. And Robocop.

MovieRetriever: Would District 9 have happened if Halo had gone forward? If Halo had taken years of your life, do you do this one next? Does District 9 still exist?

BLOMKAMP: I don't know. It's a good question. The process for me was that I did the short film [Alive in Jo’burg] because I wanted to do science fiction in South Africa. It was purely messing around on an artistic level. So, I was aware of the fact that I had worked on it like a piece of artwork and shelved it. Never once did it occur to me that I was doing it to try and make a feature film out of it. I don't even know why that didn't occur to me at the time. It just didn't. So I put it on a shelf. Then I worked on some other stuff. Then I got Ari Emmanuel as an agent and he started sending my work out to people. I started to realize that I wanted to make something that was my own. So, just before Halo came up, Alive in Jo’Burg, I realized could be made into a film. So, for a month or two before Halo, I realized that. Then Halo came up. And it collapsed. Fran Walsh said, "Why don't you take Alive in Jo’Burg and make it into a film?" They first said, "We can help you get a film off the ground. It can be a different experience from what you just went through. It can be independent. You can have control." I knew I wanted it to be sci-fi or horror and she said, "Why not Alive in Jo’Burg?" So, it's kind of weird. Again, it didn't occur to me again, even though I had been thinking about it before Halo. So, I don't know. It's a totally interesting question. It easily could have NOT been made.

MovieRetriever: How hands are on Peter and Fran in the process?

BLOMKAMP: The time that Fran was involved most was when... Terry and I wrote the film in 2007, almost that entire year and the beginning of 2008. We would go over to Pete and Fran's place. We'd send them whatever we'd written and go over and have meetings with them. Fran was involved in that process more than later on. She would give us notes ... and Phillipa [Boyens] as well. They would critique what we were writing and throw ideas out there that we could take if we wanted. So, they were very helpful that way. That was where my communication with Fran was at its highest. Then we shot in Jo’burg and they got sent dailies. And then we did revisions after we got back to New Zealand and went back and shot some pick-ups and a few more scenes. Throughout that process is probably where ... by the time we got back after the second time and I was in the editing room is where my interaction with Pete started to pick up again. He'd check out what I was doing. He'd watch stuff and point out ... especially with the beginning of the film where there's a lot of dense information and back story ... what was confusing to the audience. He was helpful and the feedback was from a very experienced storytelling stand point, which is pretty amazing. That's how the interaction worked. He was always ... I think right from the beginning that he decided that he was going to help make the film that I wanted to make. He kept saying that he wanted to get into my head and help me make what was in my head and provide the parameters that would allow that to happen.

MovieRetriever: Did that happen?

BLOMKAMP: Totally. It's weird. When I got Halo and when they helped me make District 9, I was very grateful. To give a film as big as Halo to a first-time director was a big deal and that hinged on Pete. When that collapsed, they allowed this to happen. When I was making the film, you get lulled into a sense of repetition. You're existing and not thinking because you're working like a motherf**ker. At the end, now that the film is done, I'm starting to realize again how appreciative I am. It's pretty rare for a first time filmmaker to get "go off and make what you want to make."

BLOMKAMP: Which I wanted.

MovieRetriever: But do you know the answers to those questions? Do you know the aliens’ back story – what their planet is like, where they're from, and so on?

BLOMKAMP: Yeah. The back story for them was worked out. Going forward, what happens next, I don't know. I have no idea. But, going backwards I do know.

MovieRetriever: Would you do the sequel if it's offered?

BLOMKAMP: I've considered it now that it keeps coming up. It's weird. It didn't occur to me until just before I left New Zealand. Just before Comic-Con. It hadn't actually occurred to me. You get into this bunker mentality and you're just at war until it comes out. Right before I left, I said to Pete, "If the film is successful, would you be up for producing another one?" I've had a really awesome time working on it. Of course, you have no idea how it's going to go. My answer is ... there's two answers – if it's succesful, in other words, the population WANTS one ... that needs to happen. If that happens, then I'm FULLY on-board. It's a rare grouping of creative things that interest me. It's been an incredibly, creatively fulfilling environment to work in. It's like a very open, creative world, that District 9 world. I would like to work on it again. You can go off in many different directions.

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District 9 opens everywhere on Friday, August 14th, 2009!

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Check Back Later This Week for Our Full Interview with Sharlto Copley!