Hollywood Popular Artists

Like the rest of us, Matt Damon was very impressed with Neill Blomkamp's directorial debut "District 9." In fact, that's the main reason he wanted to come on board Blomkamp's upcoming sci-fi project "Elysium" when he was offered a part.

Damon has dabbled in genre before, but this is his first full-blown sci-fi movie. MTV News caught up with him while he was promoting the project at Comic-Con and asked him why he knew this was the right time to head to outerspace.

"When I saw 'D9,' I felt like, 'Man, this guy, he's created this world that I recognize but I've never seen before. And yet it's performance-based too. Those performances are really good. He clearly knows how to work with actors. This is really great,' " Damon recalled. "And so when this kind of fell into my lap, there was no way I was going to turn it down."

There was once a time when Damon had been a major contender for the role of Jake Sully in "Avatar," a role which eventually ended up going to Sam Worthington. Damon still expresses regret that he wasn't able to star in that film or work with director James Cameron.

"I was dying to do 'Avatar,' " he said. "I was dying to work with Jim Cameron, but I just couldn't; it was a scheduling problem. I literally couldn't do it without kind of ducking out of the last 'Bourne' movie before it was really done five years ago. And so, morally, I couldn't do it."

"Elysium" is due out on March 1, 2013.

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