Annihilation director teases new FX series, likens story to Ex Machina

Alex Garland continues to up his game in the sci-fi genre, from his Oscar-winning feature film debut (Ex Machina) to his already-buzzing sophomore effort (Annihilation). Now, the filmmaker hopes to make an eight-episode FX series his next project.

Garland revealed details on what looks to be his first endeavor with the television network after inking an overall deal with FX Productions in July 2017.

“The next project, provided it happens — hopefully we’re gonna shoot it later this year — [is] an eight-part television series for FX,” he told Fandango in an interview. “It’s a sort of science-fiction, but it’s a much more technology-based sci-fi whereas Annihilation is a more hallucinogenic form of sci-fi and more fantastical form of sci-fi.”

Garland went on to explain that the untitled work “is slightly more in common with projects I’ve worked on like Ex Machina or Never Let Me Go, which are taking something about our world now — not our world in the future, but our world as it is right now — and then drawing sort of inferences and conclusions from it.”

He penned the screenplay for Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro set in a dystopian world about three alumni from a reclusive boarding school caught in a love triangle. With Ex Machina, about a programmer enlisted to evaluate the human qualities of a synthetic robot, the film earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and a win for best visual effects.

A spokesperson for FX had no further information to offer EW on the planned series at this time, but Garland said it “is already written” and he hopes to direct all eight episodes.

“For practical reasons that might not be possible,” he added. “That’s the way I’m thinking about it at the moment.”

Garland’s latest work, Annihilation, brings the book by Jeff VanderMeer to life. The film will open in theaters on Feb. 23 with Natalie Portman leading a group of female scientists investigating The Shimmer, a dangerous, otherworldly place that obeys its own set of natural laws.

“Alex’s gifts as a writer have long been apparent, and he made a huge impression with his directorial debut Ex Machina,” Eric Schrier of FX Networks and FX Productions said in a statement in July. “We are thrilled that he is bringing his talents as a writer and director to television through FX Productions. We have enormous respect for his uncompromising creative vision and we look forward to supporting his original and bold ideas.”