Remember Neill Blomkamp? The South African-born filmmaker who announced his arrival to the world with the sensational District 9 and challenged the sci-fi landscape with thought-provoking movies. At one point, he was even eyed to do Alien and RoboCop sequels, because that’s the cache he built.
Well, expect less of this and more AI slop in the future, as he released an AI-generated short film titled Nightborne — you can watch the full 13-minute short here. If that isn’t enough, he also announced the formation of his own AI studio.
“I’ve been experimenting with AI for a couple of years, and it’s now at the point where I want to tackle a full feature in this format,” Blomkamp posted on X. “This is a 13-minute test start. It was made with real concept artists, and features the faces and voices of 32 real people. Barley Studios will be my new AI studio for creating my own films, the way Oats Studios was for traditional film and VFX.”
As expected, Nightborne looks soulless and generic, actually making Die Antwood’s performance in Chappie appear Oscar-worthy by comparison. If this is the future of film, then just play Keeping Up With the Kardashians on loop and let us all die peacefully from that kind of brain rot.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Blomkamp was roasted for his AI “art” on social media and YouTube. One commentator wrote, “Guys, be nice to Neill, he spent the entire afternoon prompting this.” Another commented, “My mom asked me if the dishes were done and I replied, ‘Neill Blomkamp’ and she smiled. She knew they were washed.” You can scroll through the pile-on for yourself in the replies to his announcement.
The topic of AI in the film industry has become a major talking point in recent times. While some highlight how it’s a technological development like anything else before it, there are a myriad of issues involving environmental impact, job losses, and lack of regulations that have yet to be addressed. The LLMs have to learn from somewhere, but what content are they being fed and did the creators of said content agree to share it? In a sane world, words like plagiarism and copyright infringement exist for this very reason.
For Blomkamp, who hasn’t experienced the same type of recent success he had in his earlier years, it’s a risky move to declare yourself an AI apostle right now – especially when your entire industry is on fire because of it. Perhaps the saddest part is one person’s comment, which read, “Bro, we just wanted District 10.”
It’s true. We all wanted District 10 and that would have been a better announcement than whatever Nightborne is. Heck, Fortress of Solitude even asked star Sharlto Copley about the long-gestating sequel in 2024. However, if this is the direction in which Blomkamp is going in his filmmaking, then maybe District 10 doesn’t need to happen. In a time when everybody needs art more than ever, this slop isn’t it. To quote a popular South African saying that Blomkamp should know all too well: “Sies!”
