‘Chappie’ Release Date, Cast, and Storyline Announced

Columbia Pictures' Chappie may be one of the biggest films coming this spring said Slash Film. Directed by Neil Blomkamp based on a screenplay which he co-wrote with his wife Terry Tatchell, the science fiction action comedy thriller film will be hitting the theater screens beginning March 6, 2015.

The movie Chappie tells the story of a robot imbued with artificial intelligence who is stolen by two local gangsters who want to use him for their own nefarious purposes. Sharlto Copley portrays Chappie while rappers Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$er of Die Antwoord play the roles of the two gangters who will kidnap him. The rest of the all-star Chappie cast includes Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Dev Patel, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Anri di Toit, and Watkin Tudor Jones.

Blomkamp and Tatchell are best known for their work on the mock-documentary sci-fi "District 9," a critically acclaimed film and a box office hit despite its modest production budget and its cast of relatively unknown actors.

Compared with his other work Elysium according to Movie Pilot , Blomkamp described Chappie as "a fundamentally more simple story, a comedy, a heartfelt story, in a science fiction setting." In an earlier talk with Empire, he said "District 9, Elysium and Chappie were all born out of some visual concept first. Chappie is the imagery, because I think I'm a visual person first, of this ridiculous robot character. It's much more comedy based, and in an unusual setting."

Filming for Chappie started October 2013 and ended this February. The first promo banner for the film was unveiled at the halls of Comic-Con 2014 in San Diego. The studio's official storyline for the film reads: "Every child comes into the world full of promise, and none more so than Chappie: he is gifted, special, a prodigy. Like any child, Chappie will come under the influence of his surroundings - some good, some bad - and he will rely on his heart and soul to find his way in the world and become his own man. But there's one thing that makes Chappie different from anyone else: he is a robot. The first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. His life, his story, will change the way the world looks at robots and humans forever."