Hugh Jackman (The Wolverine) has announced during a press conference at the Zurich Film Festival that he is set for a supporting role in a sci-fi film Chappie, which is – similar to District 9 – based on one of Neill Blomkamp‘s short films, titled Tetra Vaal.
We already know that Blomkamp‘s follow-up to Elysium, has Dev Patel (Slumdog Millonaire) cast as the lead in a new South Africa- based sci-fi project, and will bring back his regular Sharlto Copley to voice a robot police officer who’s kidnapped by the two hoodlums that will be played by South African rappers Ninja and Yolandi Visser of the experimental hip-hop duo ‘Die Antwoord’.
According to Bleeding Cool, ‘it would seem that Jackman is playing a CEO who ends up on the wrong side of the gangsters,’ the character that is ‘apparently quite resourceful.’ Patel reportedly plays a guy from the neighborhood who realizes Chappie’s gone missing and decides to figure out where he is.
Described as a ‘hilarious mix’ of RoboCop and E.T., the Blomkamp’s next movie is scheduled for release on March 27th, 2015 and apparently won’t be as political and dystopian as his two previous films.
Jackman currently stars in Denis Villeneuve’s thriller Prisoners and will reprise his signature superhero role again next year in X-Men: Days of Future Past. He’s supposed to star as renowned circus showman P.T. Barnum in the musical The Greatest Showman on Earth, set to be directed by Michael Gracey.
