1. They've been trying to do that for a while now.
2. No it won't. Proven money-makers always beat unknowns in the business world.
3. No it won't. Same as 2.
4. No it won't. Same as 2.
5. This bit has come and gone occasionally since Star Trek.
6. Same as 5.
7. Studios always like low-budget blockbusters, but they're very hit and miss. Larger budget does tend to make more money more consistently.
8. No, Transformers 2 and GI Joe showed that, and studios already knew it (look at any horror film). Actually, critics liked D9 ok.
9. No, it won't. Blockbuster sci-fi fans want explosions and combat suites. They don't care that much about cultural studies. Familiar wins most of the time in the light skiffy sci-fi that dominates the box office.
10. No, it won't.

Come on, now. D9 was good, but it wasn't genre-shattering. It looked cool, but the plot was pretty shallow when you actually look at it. In the end, it was about battle suites and gun fights, not deep emotional turmoil.

Nice wishlist, but that's all this is: a wishlist. Giant movie studios don't change their mentality just because a blogger on a sci-fi website says they will.

I know the movies is now considered a "sleeper" in the box office, it got excellent reviews, and the stuff on the wish list are nice (that's why I like good science fiction anyway!). But did it really honestly make enough money and garner enough attention to change how movies are made???

Are sci-fi fans the biggest pessimists or what?

As a fan of science fiction for 40 years now, I read the list presented and see key points that movie makers used to follow up to and around 1997 give or take.

I want to believe it... all of it... there is a lot of truth if you are talking about filming in another country. The Movie industry may need to permanently move operations to Canada or S. America or wherever in order to compete financially, but I would agree that with all the crud getting produced today, there will be a market for big buck high speed strobe flashes called action.

D9 was a great flick, but the shakey cam certainly brought down the potential quality.

I LOVED District 9 and want Hollywood to change just as much as this list's author...but like Dude66 and Superchimp said, it will never happen. D9 has grossed $72 million while Transformers 2 has raked in $400 million. The only change we're going to see from Hollywood is more movies like Transformers 2. God help us all.

@Superchimp: Wow. Did you actually see the same film as everyone else? Or are you really just so jaded that anything that breaks out of current molds makes you break out in pessimistic diatribe? Here is a list on why you're WAY WRONG.

1. Yes, it will. From a purely business standpoint, a film does not come out of nowhere with only a "name" producer and make 123% of its budget back in its opening weekend. A lot of this had to do with the marketing campaign.

2. Yes it will, and you are dead wrong. Every proven moneymaker starts somewhere as an obscure nobody, until it reaches a flash point and becomes popular. When good ideas come out of ambiguity it makes the Hollywood Industrial Complex stand up and take notice. There wouldn't be a million comic book movies if the first one wasn't made.

3. Yes, it just might. A well-acted film can force the powers-that-be to rethink their casting protocols. Hollywood is ALWAYS looking for new and untapped talent, and this film might help open their eyes to new avenues.

4. Jeezus. Are seriously going to state that? And to drop to a "see-also" as well? Laaaaaame. Some of the biggest blockbusters are based on properties that had little to no following AT ALL. Men In Black being the first example to jump to mind. Nobody even knew that comic existed.

5. WHAT?!?! Are you stating that multicultural or non-Caucasians can't make money? Are you an elitist racist as well? Or just such a troll that you want to poo-poo on anyone with a shard of ethnic optimism? Pathetic. Now you just got me mad.

6. Now you're just being closed-minded. And a HATER.

7. BUT PROVEN BUSINESS PRACTICES SHOW THAT ONCE SOMEONE DOES IT AND IS SUCCESSFUL, OTHER FOLLOW. Sweet boneless christ, are you that freaking dumb?

8. Have you actually seen the reviews? Rotten Tomatoes has it at 89% with 184 reviews. Check your sources, ignoramus.

9. YOU want explosions and combat "suites" (SP, BTW). Don't go projecting your shallow needs and wants on the rest of us, thank you very much.

10. ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Now you're just being a dick for dick's sake.

YES, this film was ground-breaking. NO it was not shallow and "about battle suites and gun fights". I honestly think you went to see D9, but got confused riding your moronic high-horse, and wandered into Transformers:ROTF instead. Do us all a favor and allow the actual intellectuals to speak like intellectuals. If you don't have the depth or brains to back up your mental meanderings, shut the heck up.

There need to be a lot more films with no-name casts. I am sick of seeing the same talentless hacks on screen. Give us more films like this with no preconceptions of the actors. What a treat this film was!!!

In terms of expenses, the worldwide totals for D9 are $80,465,882 as of this weekend. That may not be a Transformers but it has, thus far, made nearly 3x its production cost. No one considers D9 to be a failure.

The only reasons Transformers made as much as it did compared to District 9 is because one, it was a sequel to a movie that already did well (which also had a fairly rabid fanbase) and two, because it's rated R. The little kiddies won't be going to see it, dragging their parents along, nor will the people like me who don't really go for every other word being the f-word or excessive violence/gore. Make a sequel and slap those black censor bars over it and I guarantee it'll sell like hotcakes. (Though I hate to bring up this particular comparison, look at how that worked for the Scary Movie franchise).

it's a good movie.but it shows that good marketing is what really can sell a small movie.i saw lots of commercials for it.and the trailer made you want more.

District 9 will not, as you claim, "change sci-fi moviemaking forever" because Hollywood has a short-term memory. Just like the shock, SHOCK every few years when a "chick flick" performs well and reminds them that female viewers actually make up 51% of moviegoing audiences. Or when "Memento" was going to change moviemaking forever -- remember that?

The only thing that's certain is that we'll see more of the same: big-budget, star-driven vehicles with bad scripts and no ambition beyond a big opening weekend.

What Hollywood will see is that D9 has made 5x as much as it did to make it, Transformers might make to 2x. They would love to make 8 D9's for the same price and get back so much more profitwise. Even if only 2 films make back that amount, it works better for the studio's.

It used to be nobody went to Canada except as a last resort. Now more and more productions, especially for cable is being done up North and might one day actually have as much production work as Hollywood.

As for multi-racial casts, Hollywood tends to cast for the United States and Western Europe. That is where 90% of their revenues come from so they pander to that. Just as Bollywood concentrates on it's main consumers and so does everybody else.

Mike, no. It's not going to change all of that. Why? Because there is no D9 lunchbox.

It's all about the lunchbox -- and the t-shirt, and the video game, and the book series, and the DVD, and the ride and all of the ancillary product that fills the coffers of the movie studios.

Yes, D9 is successful and will make money. But movies like GI JOE, as lame as they are, make more money across more fronts for more divisions contributing more to the bottom line of the large conglomerates studios are a part of, than anything D9 did.

D9 means more -work- for the director, the marketing team and the actors involved. The studios will fin out how to absorb them into their collective, to add their distinctiveness to the larger effort to make the total revenues of their tentpole pictures that much larger. A 1% increase on the total returns of JOE and its varied merchandise adds more to the coffers of the company than another 10, 20 or 50% return on D9.

District 9 was a great film. T he leader character was incredibly fallible, hardly a hero until the end. I highly recommend it.

I also really enjoyed the Star Trek movie. I like variety, but can certainly say that movies that sink their budget into a big-name actor usually suck. Thinking War of the Worlds and shudder, Day the Earth Stood Still.

No idea what you're talking about, mate.

I suggest you get tuned in to ARTEMIS ETERNAL.

hollywood sucks the big one.we do not have to have them to make cool films.
why even talk about this film changing hollywood cause it won't but what can happen is more and more films made and marketed online cutting out the big wig studio and their big wig contracts.

Yup, this was one of the most original Sci-Fi stories I've seen since the "Alien Nation" movie (and then TV series). Oh wait, wasn't that one about stranded aliens who were [at least mostly] treated like second-clas citizens (at best)? D-9 seems a similar story (even with the main human character swapping sides as the movie progresses), just taken to a further extreme. But ORIGINAL? Not especially.

Come on Mr Syzmanski....
Studios have been turning out films that meet any one of those criteria for ages, especially the independents. The only twist this summer is that the low budget blockbuster this year was a Sci-Fi flick, and not some film about kids from India.
The real truth and credibility test is when it comes to OSCAR time, and seeing a Sci-Fi flick there on the dais getting an award for something other than SFX.
So, truthfully....
1. Marketing is something that works when it is unique, not viral. Like a commercial on a DVR, people have a way of tuning out old hash like billboards, and as soon as something is no longer unique, it is tuned out.
2. The assumption is that Hollywood cares. The big names get to be big because they have proven themselves with consistency. The success of one film does not make a 100% batting avg. It could be a fluke, and with the next film, a bomb would erase all memory of this film.
3. Again, no-namers are only that here to us underexposed sequestered Amerks. To the global market, these actors had some cred already, and just stepped onto our market. Real issue will be if they make additional appearances in our market.
4. Real story lines are there. The Hollywood fad for making films from the Comic Book and Video game market boon will soon be replaced by a new fad, like reality TV has been, and is now declining.
5. As for casting, agencies will not be so willing to give up their niche, and the next phase would be the cries of "They are exporting our acting jobs to foreigners!" besides all the other foreing job loss.
6. Just because John Barrowman loses his accent is not indicative of a full trend. Accents have been well utilized before, and will be again. (see the Dune Miniseries even for evidence of that)
7. Low budget film making has always been out there. Just not as prevalent in the Sci-Fi market. The low-budget epics get noticed best when they make big box office, and thereby big profits for the investors.
8. Critics are always going to have their say, and the fans can turn out in hordes for bad films just as easily with proper hype of a new style or something unique. The real success of the film is in the continued viewing, and even the DVD market, which has yet to be seen here.
9. Location filming is something that will be a bygone someday with the technology like that used on Santuary getting to the mainstream more. Why lug all that equipment to a locale, when you can replicate it just as well, if not better (Controlled weather, light, etc) in the studio.
10. Characters are as complex as they are written to be. Better writing leads to better characters. Better story lines lead to better characters. Trouble is the films have been too based on comic books and video games for so long, that they are as 2 dimensional as the genres from which they sprang, and more realistic issues breed better, 3 dimensional characters.
So NO, this one film will not change film making forever.... Were that true, LOTR would have us viewing more book based high quality productions, but we see still the proliferation of crancked out, mechanically produced comic and game 'garbage du jour'.
Wake me when a really epic sci-fi flick does get made right again... :D -KH

@Eggnog Ultimately, certain key aspects of D9 were indeed shallow.

- Stereotyped Nigerian portrayal
- Even fewer important female characters than the average action/adventure movie
- No positive person of color portrayal, aside from the assistant whose character name I can't find (the guy arrested at the end). Had they made, say, the female anthropologist (or was it sociologist?) a person of color, that would have changed the dynamics.

Seriously, look at the portrayal of the non-white characters in the movie in power, education, and cultural rank relative to the white characters. Even if you exclude the Nigerians, South Africa is a country that's 80% black, and the cast does not reflect that.

Overall, though, it was a movie about Wikus's development, and it was interesting and well acted. It's got unusual narrative structure, quite an experimental film in the opening. It's a hybrid between an action film and a character film, which doesn't really leave room for a lot of secondary character development. What they did for that budget is amazing.

Generally, all SF media is about 30-50 years behind the literature, and this one was definitely that far behind in some ways. It was beautifully done, and I think it is a worthwhile film (apart from the points above). I just wish the writers and director hadn't made some errors that were so ironic.

There's a few SF films this year that I think were stronger: Moon, for one.

I wish that well-acted movies translated into revenue because that'd mean that Transformers would have bitten the big one and Moon would have made Transformers-style revenue....

This is the most ridiculest post i read here this year.
To avoid misunderstandings: I'm from germany, english is not my main language (understandig a language is totally different from speaking/expressing thoughts in another language), but i'm a huge fan of USA movies and especially tv shows. So please, don't judge my grammar and vocabulary (even because of chapter 6 from the original poster ;) ), but my point of view.

"1. It will force the studios to come up with viral marketing campaigns that are actually intriguing."
Blair Witch and Coverfield did the same. It worked for the (very different) movies, many companies did the same thing on their product. Does anyone remember any "surprising" movie since the two ones i mentioned above?

2. "It will cause Hollywood to start looking outside the system for creators."
They do that all the time. But none of the newcomers do have a producer like Peter Jackson. The newcomers Hollywood recognizes are foreign, so Hollywood produces a remake. One movie will not change the politics, only the actors.

3. "It will result in more films with no-name casts."
God, please.. NOOOOO. Not any more new (unexperienced) actors in (mostly) cheap and stupid movies. Guys, there are sooooooo many interesting old school actors out there (many of them are doing theatre/musicals... imagine, an actor who's working daily, not a few days per year).

4. "It will lead to more storytelling that's original and not based on a comic book, pop novel, children's toy, video game, TV show or a previous movie."
NO!!!!
Do you know 5 phantastic movies that did that in english language (let's start at 1990)? The most inovative sf/horror movies i watched since 1990 were asian/european (some of them were remaked by Hollywood and MOST of them were much worse).

5. "It will lead to more multiracial and multicultural casting. "
Watch TV. There's no problem with multiracial/multiculture. There's a problem with HANDLING DIFFERENCES. Most TV/movies mostly joke about other cultures, homosexuality, everydayslivebetweendifferentpeople, the government, whatevermightbeserious.
You need a multiracial and multicultural cast? Think about a german, blond christian gay who falls in love with a transsexual jewish negro (real gender of both is replaceable; hey, Mr. Waters, did you read that? ;) ).

6. "It proves that accents aren't a bad thing, which is especially useful in sci-fi."
SRY, this is totally ridiculous.
An accent, a language, a totally different world was NEVER a problem in sci-fi.
Accents seems to be a problem in american TV/movie in general. There are many british actors who had to speak AE to get a job. Those who don't, get a "foreign" character (btw: what do Boston Legal fans think about the language in True Blood?).

7. "It will encourage lower-budget filmmaking."
Please, don't. See above.

8. "It proves that getting the fans excited about the film is more important than getting critics excited. "
Really old school. That happend to most classic movies.

9. "It will lead to more location filming."
Filming on location happens to most independant movies. That's absolutely no new information.

10. "It will result in more main characters that are morally complex and conflicted, extremely unusual in a sci-fi blockbuster."
See above. The best thing that might happen is what happened after Burtons first Batman. Since then most Superheroes became "serious". But that's not really compareable. SCI-FI was everytime a little bit ahead of society, so were many characters.

This is my very first post here, though i'm following the news at SciFi since years (sry again, SyFy sounds like Hollywood, i don't like the new name. Or is it Syience Fyction now?).
And i never encountered a post so annoing like this one.

BTW.: I enjoyed D9. It's entertaining and it looks really good (the objective/subjective story telling is a little bit confusing, it doesn't work elegant). It's nothing really new (somehow a reverse Stranger in a Strange Land connected to V and Alien Nation with some fun), but nice to watch.

follow the money...movie making is not about art its about making money...if it makes money they do it. If it dont they wont.SO want more D9 go see it! Dont want Transformers dont line up and see it and then bitch..easy formula been working since caesar introduced the gladiator

Stargate changed the genre when it came out in '94, & look what it did; 3 live action shows & one cartoon, a line of comic books, video games, collectible cards, a magazine, toys & lots of books. Can any other movie say that; & it was a sleeper hit!!!

P.S. btw I loved District 9 it was really cool!!!

Hollywood DOES go with the money maker, and this movie made plenty of money...it will be copied. And in all honesty is the only Sci-Fi movie this year thats stand a chance at being nominated for an oscar.

This isn't really to the article at hand, but I can only imagine what this director of District 9 is thinking right now.

Your first movie, and already people are saying it is in the top ten sci-fi classics of all time. And if they aren't saying that, then they are saying you are next Spielberg. And this director is still 29 years old. Damn!

I saw the movie twice.... I still think it's a new sci-fi classic. Yes, it had elements of several well known genre films, but there is something about this particular film, even something in the filmmaking that HASN'T been touched on yet in all the articles of praise, that you just "know" it's significant.

This is a significant film.

Perhaps unlike others though, I can live in a world where Transformers 2 AND District 9, can co-exist. I don't need TF2 to disappear in order for D9 to be enjoyable... just like I expect that TF2 fans did not need D9 to be a poor film in order to enjoy IT.

I only mention this because when we are confronted with a truly unique and game-changing film like D9, it's kind of overkill to go out of our way to disrespect OTHER films in order to make our point.

Everyone is working hard to entertain us. Show some appreciation. Clearly, BOTH types of films (mindless explosions AND thoughtful think pieces) can co-exist, at the same time.

This summer was actually a very good summer, especially if you go back and include Watchmen from a few months prior. Inbetween the hate, I think this year may go down as one of the better years of sci-fi and genre films.

This article is why SpiFFy sucks.

D-9 was a great movie. But does the author of this article remember a movie called "The Blair Witch Project"? It did all these "event" changers a long time ago.

Wait til they ask Neil B. to do a sequel with Hollywood money. Also, there are a ton of movies with Brits portraying Americans so don't hate on us please.

Yeah... I liked this WAY better when it was called Alien Nation.

Yes, I too thought this movie was terribly derivative of Alien Nation. I also thought that if this film had come out in the late 1980s, while there was still Apartheid in South Africa and while the idea of an African-American President of the United States was twenty years away, it would have been extremely profound. Nevertheless, I found District 9 to be very entertaining. But genre-changing? No, I have to agree with most of the posters here. One movie is not going to change the Hollywood machine, especially not this movie. Also, this article ignores the fact that one very large reason this movie was successful was due to the studio's very wise decision to put Peter Jackson's name first on the marquee. Seriously, without his name, how many people would have gone to see this movie?

Great post - from the first inklings of the D9 "whisper" campaigns, you could tell they were prepared to do things differently. It's also heard that they used recent grad and students from Vancouver film school to work on the Special FX rather than a veteran service bureau.

The campaign was further augmented when the film ended up being really good too - that helps ;-).

PS You can see the Alive in Joburg clip here: http://ow.ly/liaA

@ Gilveron
I didn't really really care that Peter Jackson's name was on it. I never saw the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or King Kong because they were all stupid!!! District 9 just looked cool & I hope that they make a sequel.

I really believe that you're exaggerating. If I must be honest, "DISTRICT 9" failed to really impress me as I thought it would be.

I've noticed this year that most of the movies that critics and moviegoers have been swooning over, I have found disappointing. And DISTRICT 9 is one of them.

The writing could have been better. And Blomkamp could have extended his ambiguous characterizations to the Nigerians, as well.

I liked...first I saw them as stupid aliens...then I saw pass their faces and into their hearts ::tears::

The only thing that is going to change is MIKE SZYMANSKI will eventually take a look at the history of Hollywood and realize two things. 1) Many movies have met some or all of these criteria before and 2) D9 (a modest success so far) succeeded despite many of these elements, not because of them. Go to the video store. You'll find plenty of suck-@$$ movies made by unknown directors with unknown stars for almost nothing.

Sadly G.I. Joe and Transformers are much bigger winners than D9, so making crap works well for Hollywood. What needs to change is the movie goers.

Hollywood movies are becoming increasingly dull and predictable, I pity those who have become addicted to high gloss, big names, and US wave flagging propaganda and candycoated happy endings.

The gritty and organic feel of District 9 is powerful and impresses, the serious underlying topic of xenophobia is rich in real human drama, the acting is superb, all in all District 9 shows that talent, hard work and creative minds make for innovative and first class entertainment.

12 Monkeys anyone? Viral Marketing

i luved it.. really agree wid u it will change the celluloid..
http://dudoism.blogspot.com/2009/09/district-9-review.html