Nothing comes back: all the updates, trailers, and commentary for Alex Garland’s Annihilation – The Verge

How Annihilation’s visual effects artists created those terrifying mutant creatures

2018-02-28T16:21:41-05:00

The last time director Alex Garland and visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst worked together, they created Alicia Vikander's Ava, the robot star of Ex Machina. For their follow-up collaboration, Annihilation, they had a much bigger set of challenges. Garland's newest film is a heady mind-trip that explores humanity's self-destructive impulses, but it's also a walking tour of the gorgeous and the grotesque. The story of Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist who joins a group of women to explore an area of coastal America that's rapidly mutating due to an alien contaminant, Annihilation is full of improbably beautiful biological mashups, …

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The original scripted ending of Annihilation sounds better

2018-02-26T14:58:51-05:00

Alex Garland's heady, dreamlike science fiction movie Annihilation opened over the weekend to a modest $11 million box office take that looks paltry compared to Black Panther's stunning numbers, but it's still about what distributor Paramount Pictures projected. The film is something of a hard sell for widespread, mainstream audiences: it's more philosophical than action-oriented, it's distinctly weird and idiosyncratic, and it ends on an inconclusive moment that suggests a few different possibilities without explaining or committing to any of them.

But according to a script report from Slashfilm, Garland's script originally had a more defi …

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Annihilation is the most thoughtful science fiction movie since Arrival

2018-02-23T10:37:31-05:00

In the spoiler-sensitive environment of today's entertainment, there may be people who resent the opening scenes of Annihilation, which gives away most of the movie's direction. A biologist named Lena (Natalie Portman) has survived a cataclysmic event. Sitting in an isolation chamber, surrounded by unnerved people in hazmat suits, she's interrogated about what just happened to her. In the process, she reveals who among the yet-to-be-introduced cast of characters survives, and who dies. And the scene makes it clear that while some of her companions may be alive, she's the only one who made it back to report. This framing device can't quite be …

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A new trailer for Alex Garland’s Annihilation shows off the weirdness of Area X

2018-02-03T17:45:02-05:00

Paramount Pictures has released a new trailer for Alex Garland's upcoming science fiction-horror film Annihilation, showing off the strange world that an expedition finds when they enter a zone called Area X.

The film is based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, about a team of scientists that enters the region and discovers a surreal world where nature has taken over in strange ways. We've seen a bit of this weirdness in prior trailers and featurettes, but in this new trailer, we see the team trying to comprehend the world they're walking through.

In this trailer, the team encounters strange creatures in the zone, and The Biologist (pla …

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A new featurette explains Annihilation’s mysterious Area X

2018-01-26T10:26:29-05:00

One of the most anticipated movies of 2018 is Alex Garland's Annihilation, a science-horror story set in a region of the country that's been isolated by a mysterious barrier called the Shimmer. A new featurette helps explain what the barrier is - and what lies beyond it.

The film is based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer, and it follows a five-woman team that ventures past the barrier and into Area X, where they discover a world that nature has taken over in strange ways.

One of the film's stars, Natalie Portman, says that none of the scientists know what the Shimmer is, nor what has happened to the people who have gone beyond it. It's cons …

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The latest trailer for Alex Garland’s Annihilation shows off a strange new world

2017-12-13T10:06:32-05:00

In September, Paramount released the first trailer for Ex Machina director Alex Garland's next science fiction thriller Annihilation, showing off an expedition entering a bizarre world. Today, the studio released a new trailer that shows off the utter strangeness of Area X.

Based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation is about a journey into a surreal universe. The new trailer gives us a deeper look into the film's surreal world.

It opens with a scientist (Benedict Wong) questioning Natalie Portman's character, the Biologist, who asks her to start from the beginning. We then see the Biologist and her husband (Oscar Isaac) before he …

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Watch the first trailer from Alex Garland’s next movie Annihilation

2017-09-27T10:41:58-04:00

One of 2018's most anticipated films, Ex Machina director Alex Garland's Annihilation, now has a trailer.

Annihilation is based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, and it's one of the best horror novels to come out in recent years. The film boasts an impressive cast, including Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac. The trailer opens with a shot of a five-woman team walking across a wide field and into a strange barrier. Beyond the translucent wall is Area X: a lush, surrealistic world cut off from our own, in which nature has returned in some bizarre ways. We then see Portman's character back in a clean room, being que …

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Ex Machina director Alex Garland’s next film will hit theaters on February 23rd

2017-08-03T16:05:27-04:00

Paramount has set a release date for Ex Machina writer-director Alex Garland's next film, Annihilation: February 23rd, 2018.

Based on a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as a biologist who joins an expedition into a mysterious zone called Area X after her husband (Oscar Isaac, who starred in Ex Machina and The Force Awakens) returned home from a year-long absence in the same region. The film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), and Tessa Thompson (Creed). We had a chance to see some of the footage from the film earlier this year at CinemaCon, and found it to b …

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Oscar Isaac is joining the cast of Alex Garland’s new sci-fi movie Annihilation

2016-03-30T10:39:38-04:00

Oscar Isaac and Alex Garland are teaming back up for Garland's new movie Annihilation, an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's beguiling 2014 sci-fi novel of the same name. Isaac is joining an already-impressive cast: Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tessa Thompson are all on board. The movie will revolve around a four-person expedition into Area X, a mysterious zone that had adverse effects on 11 earlier exploratory teams; Isaac will play Portman's husband, a member of an earlier expedition. VanderMeer confirmed the casting through his personal Twitter account early this morning.

Annihilation will become Isaac and Garl …

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Alex Garland’s Annihilation is shaping up to be sweet as hell

2016-01-06T14:25:53-05:00

Alex Garland's Annihilation is coming together, and the details are extremely encouraging. Natalie Portman and Jane the Virgin's Gina Rodriguez both signed on in the past few months, and this week, The Wrap reported that Creed's Tessa Thompson is the lead contender for the third major role. After a long limbo, Garland's self-declared followup to Ex Machina is actually happening. The film is expected to start shooting next spring with studio backing from Paramount, on track for a 2017 opening.

It's an exciting, risky move, largely because of the source material. Annihilation the book was one of the best science fiction stories to come out of …

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