This morning at ShoWest, Sony Pictures Entertainment premiered the first footage from Peter Jackson’s super secret project District 9. The film is directed by Neill Blomkamp, you know, the guy who was supposed to direct the Halo movie? The film is based on Neill’s excellent short film Alive In Joburg.

The footage we saw opened like a documentary with interviews with various people who live in South Africa, around a village which, big reveal, has a alien ship floating above it. The district below is actually a refuge camp where the government has contained a race of aliens who landed nearly 30 years ago.

A government organization called the MNU (Multi-National United) is in chage of containing the “non-humans”, and the narrative follows one MNU agent who gets infected with an alien-created bio-chemicle device while searching through one of their structures as part of an investigation. When the human agent begins to become sick, the government attempt to contain him to harness the biochemical he’s infected with into a weapon. He escapes and goes on a mission to expose the government’s secret plans and oppression of the alien creatures.

The footage was very impressive, and you can definitely see why Jackson was backing Blomkamp in the Halo movie adaptation. Even though it was not complete, everything looked very real and gritty, and not so other worldly like other sci-fi films. The alien creatures are tall and red, and the closest thing I can compare them to is the Predator. The end of the footage featured a lot of quick cuts, but we got to see a bunch of explosions and the use of alien-looking weapontry.

Sony says that the first trailer will premiere in “a few weeks”. Obsessed is the only Sony movie being released in the next few weeks, but I could also see the trailer possibly attached to Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine on May 1st or Paramount’s Star Trek on May 8th. Sony does have a tentpole film on Mauy 15th - Angels & Demons.