This Peter Jackson-produced sci-fi movie has sleeper hit written all over it

District 9 wasn’t the movie that Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp set out to make.  When the Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy originally teamed up with the South African-born filmmaker/visual effects specialist, it was for their planned big-screen version of Xbox’s hit video game Halo, which Jackson would produce and Blomkamp would direct.  But then rising budget costs led the studio to pull the plug on Halo and, rather than dissolve their partnership, the two decided to collaborate on another project instead.  For inspiration, they turned to a short film Blomkamp directed in 2005 entitled Alive in Joburg, which revolved around a minority population of aliens residing in Johannesburg who are discriminated against by the local South African population.  (A suitable alternate title would have been been South African Alien Nation.)  District 9 is the feature-length version Blomkamp’s short, told in first-person perspective a la Cloverfield.  On paper, the idea sounds kinda lame, but the film’s first trailer makes for compelling viewing, particularly the quick glimpses of the aliens themselves.  Look for the movie to bow in theaters this August, right around the time when audiences will be ready for a close encounter with the third kind.