District 9 Director Gets Weird In The Trailer For Short Film Series

There's a lot going on in the trailer for Volume 1, a series of short films from Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios, and all of it is pretty unsettling. Of course, that was absolutely what the director of District 9 was going for.

Blomkamp recently revealed that he'll use Oats Studios as an outlet for some of his weirder ideas, and he'll share the experimental shorts for free on the studio's YouTube page. Basically, it'll be a testing ground to see which projects can be expanded into viable feature-length movies. That's a process Blomkamp has experience with: his cult sci-fi classic District 9 originated as a short film called Alive in Joburg.

The trailer for Volume 1 plays like an homage to gory '80s flicks, complete with reptilian alien overlords, troopers in exo-suits, and, you know, Sigourney Weaver. While the films may be short in length, the scope looks impressively huge. Some of the clips show grainy, VHS-style footage while others feature hi-def, cinema-quality special effects and blockbuster-type set pieces. 

A few days ago, Blomkamp announced that his proposed Alien 5 is "totally dead" since Ridley Scott returned to the franchise, so it seems the South African-Canadian director is going around the studio system for the projects that are nearest to his heart. He said on Twitter that the short films will stay online "forever," and that he has no intention of charging fans to watch them. "The goal is to see 'if' the audience likes them and 'if' they would be willing to pay for Volume 2," he said. "They are too short to charge now."

So far, there's no official release date for Volume 1, but we'll let you know when it drops. Until then, find out why we never got to see a District 9 sequel.