'District 9' Director Neill Blomkamp Casts Taylor Kitsch In New Sci-Fi Thriller 'Inferno'

It's been four years since District 9 director Neill Blomkamp unleashed Chappie upon the world, and he hasn't made a feature film since. He's had a few stops and starts, including flirtations with new Alien and RoboCop movies, and while he still has a few feature projects on his schedule, he's mostly been spending lots of time creating experimental short films. Now he's adding another movie to his pile: Inferno, a new science fiction thriller which will star True Detective's Taylor Kitsch.

According to Deadline, Taylor Kitsch (Lone Survivor, Friday Night Lights) will star in Inferno, where he'll play "a cop who is called to investigate a seemingly ordinary murder in the New Mexico desert. The arrival of the FBI confirms his suspicions that something bigger – perhaps extraterrestrial – is at play. The hunt for the killer puts him face-to-face with a humanoid beast who will stop at nothing to exterminate the one witness to the crime."

Wait...so if the killer is an alien, that means the alien understands both the concept that it has committed a crime, and the need to cover its tracks? Maybe it's just a killer taking advantage of the proximity to Area 51, so he dresses in an elaborate alien costume but is ultimately unmasked like an old Scooby-Doo episode.

In any case, this won't be Kitsch's first brush with sci-fi: he starred in both John Carter and Battleship, which were back-to-back box office bombs in 2012. Perhaps Blomkamp's more grounded, gritty style will be a better fit with Kitsch's acting style.

It looks like Blomkamp has already been scouting out New Mexico filming locations:

"I am very excited to be getting behind the camera and making Inferno with AGC," Blomkamp said in a statement. "The film is filled with themes and concepts that I find deeply fascinating, I feel lucky to be shooting it."

Production is scheduled to begin in early 2020, but it's unclear if this is going to be his next movie, or if he'll be able to squeeze in Greenland first. That film, a natural disaster thriller which has Chris Evans set to play the lead, was announced in the summer of 2018, so the most likely outcome is that Inferno will shoot first. There's been no word lately about his adaptation of the time-travel thriller The Gone World, or any other updates about his potential Elysium sequel or another movie set within the world of District 9.