Neill Blomkamp talks Off the Grid game, plus District 9 and Elysium sequels

radiotimes.com:

When we first heard that filmmaker Neill Blomkamp was making a video game, we were very excited. The director of District 9, Elysium and Chappie has a knack for creating gritty worlds with memorable sci-fi twists, which makes his gaming debut Off the Grid a highly promising prospect.

At the Gamescom 2022 conference in Cologne last month, Blomkamp spoke to RadioTimes.com about his shift into gaming. There wasn’t a demo of Off the Grid to play (the game is still a year or so away), but Blomkamp spoke enthusiastically about this latest world he’s helped create. And he also told us that he still hopes to make sequels to District 9 and Elysium.

To start, what made Blomkamp want to get into gaming? Blomkamp told us (and you can watch the interview in video form by clicking into the player above, if you'd prefer): “Before I got into filmmaking, I was an animator, and I've always been obsessed with 3D-created environments. So I like games.

“But I really love, as an artist, building 3D places that people can go to. And really, that's what games are — you drop them into this environment. So when I was directing films, always in the back of my mind, I was thinking, at some point I want to work on a game.”

Working in games “has been very prevalent in my mind for quite a few years,” Blomkamp told us, and eventually, the right opportunity did knock. As Blomkamp put it, “Richard Morgan, the science fiction author, who's also involved with this game, contacted me and he was like, ‘A lot of what we're doing is sort of influenced by Elysium, and do you feel like you'd be interested in working on a game?’

“So I went to Kyiv and I went to Frankfurt, where Gunzilla is based. And I got to meet people. And [the game] felt like a cyberpunk