Neill Blomkamp

Neill Blomkamp is a South African-born Canadian director and screenwriter, born in Johannesburg in 1979, who started out as a visual effects artist and animator in Vancouver. His mockumentary short Alive in Joburg became the basis for District 9 (2009), which he co-wrote with his wife Terri Tatchell, and he went on to direct Elysium (2013), Chappie (2015), Demonic (2021) and Gran Turismo (2023).

In 2017 he and his brother Mike founded Oats Studios in Richmond, British Columbia, releasing experimental sci-fi and horror shorts such as Rakka, Firebase and Zygote online. In July 2026 he announced Barley Studios, an AI studio that he says will make his own films the way Oats did for traditional film and visual effects.

Nightborne, made by Havenhurst Entertainment with Barley Studios, went up on YouTube on 20 July 2026: a 13-minute documentary-style horror short about a US Army pilot tied to a classified programme that sends dead soldiers back into combat, which Wikipedia says is adapted from Peter Watts's novel Echopraxia. It was generated with the Seedance 2.0 video model, with Blomkamp directing shot by shot through text prompts; he says it used real concept artists and the faces and voices of 32 real people, recorded under likeness agreements. He called it his first full test AI film and says he now wants to make a feature in the same format.

Wikipedia describes the short's reception as overwhelmingly negative, and Gizmodo judged it emotionally hollow.