Alex Garland’s Surreal Sci-Fi ‘Annihilation’ Gets an Early 2018 Release Date

If you’re not excited for Annihilation, you should be. Jeff VanderMeer’s book is one of those novels you don’t hear much about until someone thrusts it into your hands, and then suddenly everyone seems to be talking about it. It’s surreal, baffling, and beautiful, and Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) film adaptation has finally, finally gotten an official release date.

Annihilation, which stars Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, and David Gyasi, is due in theaters Feb. 23, 2018, per Entertainment Weekly. The movie was supposed to come out this year, but Paramount decided to push the release back, perhaps to avoid crowding its 2017 schedule.

The book is about four women — an anthropologist, a surveyor, a psychologist, and a biologist — who make an expedition into a zone of jungle where, due to a mysterious past cataclysmic incident, the laws of nature and physics don’t work the way they’re supposed to. There’s also a giant slug creature that writes sinister poetry. It’s great. VanderMeer himself seems to have enjoyed the film, and he said back in May that it was even more mind-blowing than his book:

It’s actually more surreal than the novel. There are a couple places where I was like, ‘I might need an anchor here.’ The ending is so mind-blowing and in some ways different from the book that it seems to be the kind of ending that, like 2001 or something like that, people will be talking about around the watercooler for years. Visually, it’s amazing. I must say that and that’s all I probably should say.

So, to reiterate, look for Annihilation in your local cineplex February 23, 2018. And be wary of any literary-inclined slugs.