HN Entertainment’s Nicholas Whitcomb and CJ Paschall conducted an interview with Studio ADI’s Alec Gillis on Tuesday where they covered a bunch of stuff including Alien 3 along with his ideas for an Alien vs Predator 3 and a TV series. ADI has previously worked practical/creature effects for Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Alien vs Predator, Alien vs Predator: Requiem, and The Predator.
When we brought up Gillis working on Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5 he was quick to mention that out of respect for the studio and the project itself they’re not going to be posting images of what they had been doing (unless given the head’s up) but admits they were doing some design work for them. He also went on to praise Blomkamp.
“We did do some design work for Neill on his Alien 5, we did a certain amount of design work, but I don’t talk much about it for all those reasons. But I can tell you that I’m a huge Neill Blomkamp fan and I think that everything he does executes is just absolutely top-notch. You know, I’ve worked with Cameron, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, and I feel like Neill Blomkamp is in that ilk. I think that he’s a visionary. Oh and Verhoeven, cause Neill’s stuff reminds me of Paul Verhoeven, but I think I love how much heart Neill Blomkamp has and his sense of humor always creeps into his work and that’s partly what gives its heart. Anyways, I really would have loved to have seen him doing Alien 5 cause I think he would have just knocked it out of the park and I think it would have been something that fans would have really loved.”
We also asked Alec about the recent tease from James Cameron about calling up Neill Blomkamp about Alien 5, and he told a story about how a Fox executive told him in the late 90s that Ridley Scott would never do another Alien film. Scott has made two more movies since that executive’s declaration.
“Well, if you get that kind of team-up if you get Cameron and Blomkamp then I think it could absolutely happen. I learned my lessons years ago, after Resurrection a Fox executive told me that Ridley Scott would never do another Alien movie and the studio would not want him to because their assumption at that time was it would be far too expensive to do anything with Ridley Scott because he has such expansive vision, but then here we are two Ridley Scott Alien movies later. Never say never, if it happened I would be obnoxiously emailing both Cameron and Blomkamp to get us on the film.”
When talking about the the various xenomorph molds and versions they’ve done over the years, Alec did circle back to talking about Alien 5 and gave some insight to what they were planning to do with the xenomorphs in Blomkamp’s film, which seemingly would have gone back to the original Ridley Scott era of the Big Chap, along with some modifications from Neill, we’ve seen versions with multiple arms making the rounds online.
Also praising Neill’s recent work on his Anthem short film Conviction.
“That’s why I was looking forward to Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5 because that would have given us the opportunity to do more in the spirit of Giger’s alien. We were looking at the 1979 alien all the way but Neill did want changes to make on it. As great as Neill’s CGI looks, I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest thing he did Anthem? His CGI just looks so there and present, Chris Harvey his VFX supervisor they just have a great team. And I said to Neill like ‘Why aren’t you doing this all digitally?’ cause if it’s biomechanical and harder-edged it lends itself to digital and I’m just surprised that a digital. He said ‘I want real a real man in a suit on set because it forces you into a certain way of shooting that would be more like what Ridley Scott did in the first film. If it’s all digital I won’t have those parameters work within and it’s gonna end up looking like something different and I don’t want that, I want it to look like Ridley Scott did it’. That’s how he thinks and I can guarantee you there’s no studio executive in the world that would say that because they don’t see things in that specific and nuanced of a way.”
Neill had posted this Alien 5 sculpt by Studio ADI on his Instagram account last October.
Keep an eye on HN Entertainment’s YouTube channel for the full interview with Alec as we’ll be spending the next couple of days posting some of the highlights on the website that were brought up in our fantastically entertaining and lengthy chat with Alec leading up to the full interview.
Alec Gillis is currently on various social media platforms including Twitter and Instagram, also consider following the official Studio ADI YouTube channel and Instagram account for some really amazing effects videos that the team over there posts on a regular basis. There might be a new Demolition Man video on the horizon, the channel and Alec’s social media accounts are totally worth checking out to get some excellent insight into the world of practical effects.
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