Alex Garland Reflects on Career, Reveals Favorite Film, and Discusses Upcoming ‘28 Days Later’ Trilogy

The ever-prolific filmmaking duo- Alex Garland and Andrew Macdonald appeared in the Edinburgh International Film Festival where they went on to reveal some of their planned works in future including the much hyped 28 years later. The pair have worked on the successful pictures including 28 Days Later, Ex Machina, the new movie Civil War among others.

Although Garland began his career as a screenwriter and director, and apart from becoming a novelist, he also become a director, he confessed that he never planned to become a director. “I wanted to stop directors from changing things, so the only way to do that was by occupying that position,” he said, smiling. Still, as Garland confessed, Ex Machina is his favorite movie that he participated in as a director. “Shooting the movie could have been easy, since we had a limited cast and crew and all of us knew what the movie is all about. ”

Garland also discussed rather openly the issue of handling ‘toxic’ film sets and how Ex Machina was a positive counterpoint to Garland’s previous projects. Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of such an idea is the film’s famous dancing scene with Oscar Isaac stripped of his prosthetics, which has become the subject of memes on the Internet; Garland honestly believes that films need a ‘tone break’ at some point.

The discussion then moved towards the next 28 Years Later which is going to be the first part of a three movie series. The original sci-fi film has been directed by Danny Boyle with the script written by John Garland The film is expected to premiers in the year 2025 and will be starred by British actors only. “There are, hopefully, three more 28 films – 28 Years Later is already shot,” Macdonald said. It has been announced that this is going to be a trilogy and it will be shot in the North of England, with the plot set after the events of the zombie apocalypse depicted in the film 28 Days Later All the films are directed by Boyle.

Garland also responded to the political aspects of Civil War, to say he is a centrist and repudiate those who said that centrism is non-political. “Centrism to me means being against extremism, particularly the extreme right which I consider to be the biggest threat to democracy,” he said.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is on until the 21st of August.