Alex Garland

After a writing a string of successful genre screenplays for other directors, Alex Garland broke out on his own year, making his directorial debut with the exquisite sci-fi Ex Machina. His next directing project is Annihilation, with Garland reportedly eyeing another of this year’s major breakout talents to join Natalie Portman in the new sci-fi film: Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez.

We’ve heard rumors for some time now about another installment in the 28 Days Later franchise — one that, in keeping with the escalation of the title 28 Weeks Later, would be titled 28 Months Later. There hasn’t been much movement on the latest chapter in the series, but that may be changing very soon, according to Ex Machina director Alex Garland, who penned the screenplay for 28 Days Later.

Not to spoil my Best Movies of 2014 So Far list whenever I get around to publishing it next month, but Alex Garland’s Ex Machina will definitely be on there. Probably pretty high, too. Garland’s directorial debut after a long career writing novels like The Beach and movies like 28 Days Later..., Sunshine, and Dredd is an outstanding sci-fi thriller about an unsettling love triangle between a robot, her inventor, and his employee. It’s so damn good, it rocketed Garland up my personal list of favorite filmmakers, to the point where I’ll pretty much see whatever he does next no matter what it is.

Welcome back to another exciting installment of Post Credits, ScreenCrush’s YouTube Video Review Show. On this stellar new episode, ScreenCrush Editor-in-Chief Mike Sampson and Managing Editor Matt Singer discuss the new sci-fi thriller Ex Machina

Most people who saw 2012’s Dredd, a dark reboot of the classic British comic book anti-hero Judge Dredd, dug it. Almost 20 years after Sylvester Stallone made a thoroughly campy mess of the property in Judge Dredd, director Pete Travis, screenwriter Alex Garland and star Karl Urban produced a far more faithful version of Dredd with a bleak tone, gritty action, and a hero who never takes off his signature helmet.

Ex Machina is Alex Garland’s first film as a director but it’s very simpatico with his screenplays for movies like 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Dredd. As a writer, Garland likes to work in compact universes — an abandoned city, a spaceship headed to the sun, a gang-infested high-rise — where characters are trapped together and pitted against one another. In Ex Machina’s story of a brilliant technologist who creates artificial intelligence, he’s found a man who fashions himself as something of an inquisitive god, and there’s a bit of that notion in Garland’s work as well — he builds little petrie dishes of life, testing mankind’s resolve under extreme stress to see whether we crack under the pressure. His findings are usually not promising.

According to my calculations, it’s been 146 months since the initial U.K. release of ‘28 Days Later,’ Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s rightfully acclaimed zombie movie about the aftermath of a terrible virus unleashed in the middle of London. The film is credited with helping revitalize the zombie genre (and popularizing zombies who run like the dickens at their victims instead of the classic George Romero shufflers), and it inspired a 2007 sequel, ‘28 Weeks Later.’ There was talk of another sequel, a ‘28 Months Later,’ set a little over two years after the zombie outbreak, but so far, the project hasn’t gotten off the ground (and we’re now about 120 months past the titular date).