‘Halo’ Almost Ruined Neill Blomkamp’s Career

Hey, you know how staying up way too late playing Halo on Xbox almost cost you your job and your girlfriend and basically almost ruined your life?

Well, Elysiumdirector Neill Blomkamp can sympathize. Halo almost ruined his life, too. Of course, that's because he almost directed the film adaptation of Halo instead of making his breakout hit, District 9, and not because, like you, he developed insomnia and high blood pressure from eating too many Doritos and staring at his TV until 3AM every night. So I guess it's not quite the same.

Blomkamp, of course, was originally hired by Peter Jackson in 2006 to direct the big screen adaptation of the hit Microsoft video game. But in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Johannesburg, South Africa, native said that the collapse of that project was the best thing that ever happened to him:

The luck is the fact that Peter and Fran let me make [District 9] out of the ruins that were Halo. What happened out of that was learning to trust my ideas. If Halo had come out and succeeded or failed, I wouldn't have learned that. It's getting to the point now where [my agency] just doesn't send me stuff anymore. It's not because I think I'm better than any of that stuff. There are many franchises out there I would love to participate in. The problem is when you agree to do that, you take a lot of the control that you have over your own creative destiny away from yourself.

So there you have it. Maybe you should turn off Halo for a while and see if your luck improves, too.

Elysium hits theaters later this week.