Alex Garland confirms plans to quit directing
It doesn’t matter what profession, it’s an accepted fact of life that it becomes increasingly difficult to carry on with a job that just doesn’t stoke the fires like once did. In the case of filmmaker Alex Garland, falling out of love with directing has positioned Civil War as his last planned feature.
While he’ll likely remain with busy in the worlds of literature and screenwriting, Garland plans to step away from the director’s chair. Notably, his first two novels, The Beach and The Tesseract, were published before he penned his first script for Danny Boyle’s classic zombie thriller 28 Days Later.
From there, he reunited with the Trainspotting filmmaker for sci-fi story Sunshine, adapted Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go for the screen and scripted cult favourite comic book adaptation Dredd before transitioning into directing. When he did, Garland was instantly established as a talent with an incredibly bright future.
Ex Machina secured him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and won the ‘Best Visual Effects’ trophy, before he followed it up with mind-melting psychological body horror Annihilation, the opinion-splitting madness of Men, and incoming socially and politically-conscious dystopian actioner Civil War.
A24’s most expensive production to date, it’s the biggest canvas either the production company or Garland has ever worked on, but it hasn’t changed his mind on wielding the megaphone. In 2022, he hinted that Civil War could be the last film he ever directs, and he has maintained that position in a new interview with The Guardian.
When asked if that was still his plan, Garland confirmed that “nothing’s changed,” before reiterating that “I’m not planning to direct again in the foreseeable future.” He’ll be more than happy to write, though, and remains on board for Boyle’s 28 Years Later, but it’s his frustrations with the creative process that have soured him on directing.
“The pressure doesn’t come from the money,” he explained of Civil War‘s hefty budget. “It comes from the fact you’re asking people to trust something that, on the face of it, doesn’t look very trustworthy.” His fourth and prospectively final movie as a solo director may be about to release, then, but he’s still got at least one more project with his name on it.
It was only recently that D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, and Finn Bennett were named as the leads in Warfare. Plot details remain under wraps for the time being, but Garland co-wrote the screenplay and will co-direct the film with Civil War military supervisor Ray Mendoza, which could prove to be his swansong.
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