Alex Garland Retiring From Directing After ‘Civil War’
Alex Garland, perhaps one of the most exciting filmmakers to have come out in recent years, thanks to films like 2015’s Ex Machina or 2018’s Annhilihation, has confirmed that his disillusionment with filmmaking has not gone away and will be retiring from directing after Civil War is released.
This was said during a new interview with The Guardian, where he went back to an interview from a few years ago where he mentioned retirement plans:
“Nothing’s changed. I’m in a very similar state. I’m not planning to direct again in the foreseeable future.”
He then added that “The pressure doesn’t come from the money. It comes from the fact that you’re asking people to trust something that, on the face of it, doesn’t look very trustworthy,” which ranges from working with blue screens that will later be replaced in post to working with Alicia Vikander and Sonoya Mizuno on Ex Machina, where they had to trust that their nudity would be treated respectfully, unlike everywhere else. It’s a burden that keeps him up at night, he said.
But Alex Garland is not stepping out of Hollywood entirely just yet. He was announced earlier this year to be writing 28 Years Later, the sequel to the Danny Boyle-directed zombie film 28 Days Later. It would be the second installment in a trilogy, with the team of Garland and Boyle working on all three. In addition, he’s co-directing the new A24 project Warfare, along with Ray Mendoza. “I respect him a great deal, though we’re very different,” he said about their collaboration.
Garland’s solo directorial farewell, Civil War, will bow in theaters on April 12, after premiering at the South By Southwest Film Festival, where the reception was, as expected, mixed.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
