Thursday, September 10, 2009

Another famous South African director

Neil Blomkamp may be the talk of the town these days with his directorial debut of District 9, but there is also another famous South African director lurking around in Hollywood.

Remember Gavin Hood? He started of as the Wester Province Rugby fullback in the South African TV series, The Game. This is the same guy that went on to write and direct the Oscar winning Tsotsi. His follow up film to Tsotsi was the critical acclaimed Rendition starring Reese Whitherspoon and Jake Gyllehaal. The movie only went on to make around US $27 million. That is not a lot according to Hollywood standards, but it did deal with some issues that makes the American public little uncomfortable. It certainly wasn’t a mainstream film.

The next movie he directed was none other than X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman. He got a little stick from the die hard X-Men fans for it, but the movie still went on to make a whopping US $ 363 million and had a budget of US $150 million.

That is a good profit by any means. It is always good seeing Saffas making it big.

3 comments:

BioniKat said...

Who would have thought that Gavin Hood had all these directorial talents when he was playing the rugger player in The Game!? He was pretty cute then if I can remember back!!

Desia said...

My son and wife loved District 9 because, for one, they recognized so many typical SA expressions, like "sweeties" for treats, etc. (They didn't grow up in SA, but Son has visited many times and Daughter-in-law once for two months.)

Mandy said...

I loved Wolverine and was really proud of Gavin Hood for that.

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