'Ex Machina' Director Alex Garland's New A24 Movie Eyes Jessie Buckley For Lead Role
It's now been three years since writer/director Alex Garland made Annihilation, a visually stunning, occasionally confounding, and ultimately jaw-dropping piece of science fiction cinema that ended up being my favorite film of 2018. And after diving into television with his Hulu limited series Devs, Garland is finally plotting his return to moviemaking.
His enigmatic new film for A24 is eying Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, Fargo) and Rory Kinnear (Skyfall) in starring roles, and you can read everything we know about it below.
Deadline reports that Garland, the director of Ex Machina and Annihilation and writer of Dredd and 28 Days Later, is poised to head back to directing films again. The outlet reports that the newest Alex Garland movie will be called Men, but then later in the same piece refers to the movie as an "untitled project," so make of that what you will. If the film is called Men, that title seems ironic: the story centers on a female character to be played by Buckley, who will be portraying "a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside after the death of her ex-husband." It's also unclear if Kinnear is playing the ex-husband, but that seems to be the implication.
As with his other directorial efforts so far, Garland is set to write the screenplay as well as direct. Deadline points out that Buckley's "deal is not closed but is headed in right direction." Eli Bush, Andrew Macdonald, and Allon Reich will produce the film alongside mega-producer Scott Rudin. A24, the company that distributed Garland's Ex Machina, will be financing and distributing this film as well.
Kinnear is perhaps best known for playing Bill Tanner, the suit-wearing MI6 agent who has tagged along at M's heels in many of the recent James Bond movies (and will do so again in No Time to Die, assuming we ever get to actually see that damn movie). But with all due respect to him, Buckley is the really exciting choice here. She's one of the most talented rising actresses of her generation – get you a performer who can turn in strong performances in works as varied as Wild Rose, Chernobyl, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and Fargo. Evidently the part she's playing is "a sought-after role for some of the town's rising stars," but it's not surprising that she ended up beating out the competition. The idea of Buckley leading a Garland production has me amped, and I can't wait to learn more about this one.