It’s been announced that Annihilation (2017), the newest film from Alex Garland, is coming out next year in February. The experienced script writer, author of the texts for successful films like 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007) or Dredd (2012), reached a great audience and critics recognition by his debut film as a director, Ex Machina (2014) –read our review here-. The movie won a long list of awards, including Best Achievement in Visual Effects in the Oscars 2016, where Garland was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
This time, Alex Garland has adapted the novel Annihilation by American author Jeff VanderMeer. The novel is the first in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. The book describes a team of four women (a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor) who set out into an area known as Area X. The area is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization. They are the 12th expedition. The other expeditions have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma. The novel won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.
(Taken from the novel’s Wikipedia page)
In 2014, Paramount Pictures acquired rights to the novel. Location filming by Lighthouse Pictures Ltd occurred starting in late April in London. The movie is starred by Oscar Isaac, who already appeared in Ex Machina (2014) as the creator of the A.I. creature. With him, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson complete the main cast for the film.
