Did you know that District 9 was originally supposed to be a Halo movie? District 9 turns 15 years old today, so here are some things I bet you never knew about it. The story of District 9 starts in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1995. That’s when 16-year-old Neal Blomkamp first met 22-year-old Charltold Copley. Both of them had attended Red Hill High School, and the two of them bonded over 3D animation projects. Blomkamp would soon move to Vancouver and go to Vancouver Film School. After college, he worked in the entertainment industry as a visual effects artist, 3D animator, and commercial director. At the same time, he was making his own short films, including a 2005 short called Alive in Joburg about aliens being subjugated in the South African city starring his old pal Charltold Copley. The short was inspired by the real apartheid story of District 6 in Cape Town in 1966, when the South African government forcibly removed 60,000 people of mixed race from their homes to make way for a new white neighborhood. Blomkamp also made a trilogy of shorts in 2007 called Landfall, which was set in the Halo universe and was part of the marketing rollout for Halo 3. Around the same time, Peter Jackson and 20th Century Fox were developing a Halo movie. Jackson was impressed by Blomkamp’s shorts and commercials, so he brought him on to direct the video game adaptation. It would be Blomkamp’s first feature, but he later said that pre-production on Halo was a nightmare, and that communication between him and the studio eventually broke down. Fox ended up pulling its funding, and the Halo movie was shelved. But Peter Jackson believed in this new director and wanted to make a movie with him, so they decided to expand Alive in Joburg into a feature film, District 9. Blomkamp wrote the script with his wife, Terri Tatchell, and they were inspired by 1980s hardcore sci-fi action movies like Aliens, Terminator, Predator, and Robocop. Blomkamp said, They brought back Chartel Copley to play the lead, and this would be his first ever professional acting gig. He had no intention of making acting his career. And then Peter Jackson was able to secure a $30 million budget from QED International. The film shot on location in Johannesburg, South Africa, and at sound stages in New Zealand from 2007 to 2008. The sets, locations, and props were picked to be as authentic as possible to South Africa, and they shot in real impoverished neighborhoods where forced government relocations and violent unrest had actually taken place. All of the buildings and the dwelling scene in the movie were, for the most part, actually real places that people lived in those cities. The mutilated animal carcasses in the background of many scenes were real, and also, for the most part, already there at the locations. The film features real weapons and vehicles produced by the South African arms industry. And because of the handheld filming style, they shot on red digital cameras. The movie used nine cameras total, borrowed from Peter Jackson’s personal collection. Blomkamp was very specific about the design of the aliens. At first, the aliens were going to be on all fours and have leathery skin and tentacled faces, and they would have been performed by actors in creature suits. But those designs weren’t human enough for Blomkamp. He wanted the aliens to first appear frightening and off-putting, hence their bug-like appearance. But as the movie goes on, we need to empathize with them, so we knew they had to stand on two legs and have great capacity for human emotion. So aside from the aliens that are seen on the operating table in the medical lab, all of them in the movie were created with CGI. The idea of aliens eating cat food in the film was inspired by a producer who used cat food as bait when he was catching prawns while fishing in Vancouver. The clicking sounds the aliens make was created by rubbing a pumpkin. And then when the movie was finished, TriStar Pictures, a Sony company, came on as distributor. Sony started marketing the movie a year out from its release, launching at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008 with materials pointing to some mysterious, teaser-filled websites. This was the era of the ARG marketing campaign, of course, and this web-based campaign slowly built hype over the course of the year. Sony also had a subtle outdoor marketing campaign showcasing human-only signs on park benches and bus stops. This unusual marketing scheme totally worked. The movie hit theaters on October 14, 2009, and did $37.4 million opening weekend, before going on to gross $211 million total worldwide. Critics loved it, calling it an instant sci-fi classic. Today, 90% of the 314 reviews assessed by Rotten Tomatoes are positive. The National Board of Review put the movie in its top 10 list for the year, and it was nominated for four Oscars—Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, and Visual Effects. While it didn’t win a single one, it does have the honor of being the fourth science fiction movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture. The previous three were Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange, and E.T. And District 9 was actually nominated alongside the fifth sci-fi Best Picture nominee, Avatar. In 2010, IGN named District 9 number 24 on its list of the top 25 sci-fi films of all time. And there was some controversy around the movie. It was actually banned in Nigeria because the country’s government didn’t like how the movie’s Nigerian characters were depicted. The movie put Blomkamp and Copley on the map. The director would later go on to make Elysium, Chappie, and Gran Turismo, while Copley has starred in movies like The A-Team, Maleficent, and Monkey Man. Halo would go on to be adapted into a TV series on Paramount Plus. It lasted for two seasons, but was just canceled last month. Neil Blomkamp talked about doing a sequel to District 9 over the years, and in 2021 it seemed like it was really happening and that a script had been written. But as of last year, he was less sure, telling The Hollywood Reporter, I don’t know if I even want to make that right now, but at some point down the line it’ll probably get made. Hey, if you made it to the end of this video, thank you so much. Know that your attention span is better than most. And if you’d like more, I just started a new long-form YouTube channel. You can find it via my TikTok profile, and I’d appreciate all the support over there that I can get. Thanks.