Attack the Block Director Offers Promising Update on Sequel

The 2011 sci-fi adventure Attack the Block became a cult favorite among genre enthusiasts, as well as serving as a breakout role for actor John Boyega, with director Joe Cornish recently offering a promising update on the highly anticipated sequel. Given that the original film was mainly a hit among the indie crowd as opposed to being a major financial success, hope for a follow-up mainly seemed like a pipe dream, yet Cornish’s update on the project makes it sound as though it’s only a matter of time before the project makes substantial progress, which also sees Boyega returning as a producer.

“The nice thing about the first movie was, nobody was expecting it,” Cornish recalled to The Kingcast. “Nobody knew who John was or who I was, certainly, outside of UK comedy circles. And we put a lot of work into the first one! Obviously, I can make stuff up about aliens quite easily, but the other stuff — the aspects of reality that we folded the fantasy into — we did a lot of research for, and so we are currently doing that same thing.”

He continued, “We have a very detailed treatment and a storyline we’re very, very excited about — and when I say ‘we,’ I mean me and John Boyega, who [I’m co-producing the film with] and consulting very closely with — and we’re doing all the research to make sure we get it right.”

In the original film, a neighborhood comes under siege by an otherworldly threat, with the area’s young residents banding together to hold off the creatures. Based on Cornish’s remarks, it sounds as though he wants to inject as much realism into the project as possible to keep in line with the tone of the original film. 

The filmmaker also went on to note that the scope of the adventure is expected to be much larger than its predecessor.

“This very afternoon I spent two hours [interviewing] someone whose life intersects with one element of the story, and when we’re done here I’m gonna go home and transcribe that. So, we’re doing our due diligence in building the screenplay and taking the same amount of care we took with the first one,” Cornish pointed out. “But we’re very, very quietly confident and excited about what we’ve got. We think about Alien and Aliens and Terminator and Terminator 2, and we wanna take a shot at doing our version of what people did for [those movies].”

Stay tuned for updates on the Attack the Block sequel.

Are you looking forward to the sequel? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!