Filmmaker Alex Garland was joined by his long-time collaborator and producer Andrew Macdonald in Edinburgh to ponder their career-spanning relationship, favorite projects and upcoming 28 Days zombie trilogy.
The duo, who have teamed up on titles such as The Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002), Ex Machina (2014), and most recently, Civil War (2024), spoke at an Edinburgh International Film Festival event on Sunday to a jam-packed room of industry professionals (who were hanging onto every word).
Garland and Macdonald discussed how they came to work together, as well as a few rows they’ve had over the years. Garland, who began his career as a novelist with The Beach before pivoting into screenwriting and, eventually, directing, admitted that while he doesn’t particularly enjoy directing, there is one film – his debut directorial feature – that he considers his top pick from an impressive resume.
“I never wanted to be a director,” Garland says, before prompting audience laughter with: “I wanted to stop directors from changing things and the only way to do that was by occupying that position [of director].”
“I enjoyed Ex Machina very much… It was an easy film to make. It was logistically easy, and that helped. We had four weeks in [London studio] Pinewood on a sound stage, two weeks in Norway on location. We had a very small cast.”
Ex Machina stars Domnhall Gleeson as a young programmer who becomes part of a bizarre experiment at the house of a genius scientist (Oscar Isaac) where he forms a relationship with a female robot (Alicia Vikander).
“The cast were young and very hard-working and very committed,” Garland continued. “We had a very friendly crew that believed in the project and was working as hard as they could. There was a good vibe, and everyone was pulling together. It was friendly.”
Garland elaborated on some “toxic” movies he and Macdonald have worked on, drenched in “bitching” and “fallings out,” and why Ex Machina came at just the right time. “Speaking for myself, but I always speak for Andrew too,” he said, “we had just done a sequence of toxic movies and toxic film sets are extraordinarily unpleasant places to be. You cannot escape the bitching, the factionalization, the departments falling out with each other. They’re just terrible. And I think Ex Machina came as an antidote to that. It was the precise opposite.”
The iconic scene where Isaac and his robot break out into dance, memorialized in “gif” form, came about from his own critique of Never Let Me Go, Garland explained, where Garland had learned that a film requires a “disruption of tone.”
Garland and Macdonald also spoke about the upcoming trilogy of films following on from apocalyptic thrillers 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. In 2025, 28 Years Later, with a budget of around $75 million, will mark the start of a set of three films from Boyle, Garland and Macdonald. “We’re making, hopefully three more 28 films with the first one called 28 Years Later that Alex has written, and Danny has directed, and has finished shooting,” Macdonald said. “Then we’re just about to start, tomorrow morning, actually, part two. And then we hope there’s gonna be a third part and it’s a trilogy.”
Macdonald said the films will be a British sci-fi trilogy with an all-British cast set in the north of England, specifically Northumberland and Yorkshire.
Garland and Macdonald separately touched on the difficulties of making the recently-released Civil War, set in a dystopian future America where a team of military-embedded journalists are attempting to reach Washington D.C. before rebel factions get to the White House.
“We literally couldn’t go to America,” Macdonald said of the COVID pandemic complications. “We had to wait and then we had to get special visas to go. And we made it just at the tail end of COVID. We made it with the backing of A24, who, from a producer point of view, were just amazing, because they backed what Alex wanted to do with one of the biggest budgets they had ever spent at that time.”
When asked about the political nature of the film and claims that Civil War “doesn’t pick a side,” Garland let loose. “I’m in my mid 50s and I’m a centrist,” he said. “That’s where I am politically. I’m a centrist. I’m left-wing centrist. So I write and I think and I talk and I move through the world in a centrist position. The idea that centrism is not a political position is idiotic. It is a political position. It is a political position against extremism. It’s actually specifically against the extreme right, I would say, because that’s the greatest danger that democracies tend to encounter, and they do encounter.”
He continued, “If you take that danger seriously, then centrism is a position you can take. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one. It’s my one. The idea that centrism is apolitical is just stupid.”
Civil War, written and directed by Garland, has grossed over $122 million worldwide.
Edinburgh International Film Festival runs until Aug. 21.