Actor Matt Damon and director Neill Blomkamp gave fans an update on the upcoming sci-fi film Elysium while at Comic-Con in San Diego.
Although Elysium doesn’t hit theaters until 2013, Matt Damon and District 9 director Neill Blomkamp were on hand in San Diego to give Comic-Con attendees the latest on the mysterious project known as Elysium.
As Blomkamp revealed to the press, Elysium is set in 2154 and centers around an orbital space station of the same name in a future world where Earth is diseased, polluted, overpopulated and money and resources have been taken aboard Elysium for the survival of mankind. On Elysium, humans live in a utopian setting free of war, conflict, and disease.
According to Assignment X, with Earth dying, Matt Damon’s character is desperately trying to flee to Elysium so he doesn’t meet the same fate.
“My character is trying to get to the space station,” said Damon, “because he’s dying and it has health care.”
For Matt Damon, the chance to do Elysium was a once in a lifetime project that he needed to take on. In fact, as Damon added at Comic-Con, he altered his life in order to work with Neill Blomkamp on Elysium.
“There’s no way we’re going to let this get away. So we planned our whole life around it. The level of detail that went into it was great. And after I saw District 9, Neill went to the top of the list of people I wanted to work with and I feel so lucky it came around to me so quickly.”
Interestingly, as James White of Empire Online reveals, fans of District 9 will certainly appreciate Elysium.
“The footage looks great – very reminiscent of District 9 but with a much bigger budget that Blomkamp has used wisely to make it look even heftier. While the effects were rough, they were integrated perfectly into the hardscrabble universe of the film.”
Elysium hits theaters March 1, 2013.