318- ] English Literature - Alex Garland

318 - [ English Literature

Alex Garland

Personal life

Garland is married to English-Mexican actress Paloma Baeza, with whom he has a son and a daughter. He is an atheist. Garland has described himself as politically left, but has expressed concern over increasing political polarisation, particularly in America. He cited this concern as a core inspiration for his film Civil War.

Filmography

Film

Year

Title

Director

Writer

Producer

Notes

2002

28 Days Later

No

Yes

No

2007

Sunshine

No

Yes

No

28 Weeks Later

No

Uncredited[a]

Executive

2010

Never Let Me Go

No

Yes

Executive

2012

Dredd

Uncredited[b]

Yes

Yes

2014

Ex Machina

Yes

Yes

No

2018

Annihilation

Yes

Yes

No

2022

Men

Yes

Yes

No

2024

Civil War

Yes

Yes

No

2025

Warfare

Yes[c]

Yes

No

28 Years Later

No

Yes

Yes

2026

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

No

Yes

Yes

Television

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Executive Producer	Notes
2020	Devs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Also creator

Video games

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010), co-writer

DmC: Devil May Cry (2013), story supervisor

Other credits

The Beach (2000), cartographer, based on his 1996 novel

The Tesseract (2003), based on his 1998 novel

Big Game (2014), executive producer

Theatre

The Coma (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2006), based on his 2004 novel

Bibliography

The Beach (1996)

The Tesseract (1998)

The Coma (2004)

Critical reception

Title	Rotten Tomatoes	Metacritic
Ex Machina	92% (284 ratings)	78 (42 reviews)
Annihilation	88% (327 ratings)	79 (51 reviews)
Devs	82% (90 ratings)	71 (32 reviews)
Men	69% (255 ratings)	65 (55 reviews)
Civil War	81% (391 ratings)	75 (60 reviews)
Warfare	93% (223 ratings)	77 (16 reviews)

Awards and nominations

Year		Film	Award	Category	Result
2002	28 Days Later		Fangoria Chainsaw Awards	Best Screenplay	Nominated
			Hugo Awards	Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form	Nominated
			Saturn Award	Best Writing	Nominated
2010		Never Let Me Go	British Independent Film Awards Evening Standard	Best Screenplay		Nominated
			British Film Awards	Best Screenplay		Nominated
			Saturn Award	Best Writing		Nominated
		Enslaved: Odyssey to the West	Writers' Guild of Great Britain	Best Continuing Drama		Won
2015		Ex Machina	Academy Awards Alliance of	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			Women Film Journalists	Best Writing, Original Screenplay	Nominated
			Austin Film critics Association	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			AACTA International Awards	Best Screenplay	Nominated
			BAFTA Awards	Outstanding British Film	Nominated
				Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
				Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer	Nominated
			Boston Society of Film Critics Awards	Best New Filmmaker	Nominated
			British Independent Film Awards	Best British Independent Film	Won
				Best Director	Won
				Best Screenplay	Won
			Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards	Best Screenplay	Nominated
			Chicago Film Critics Association Awards	Most Promising Filmmaker	Nominated
				Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			Directors Guild of America Award	Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film	Won
			European Film Awards	Best European Screenwriter	Nominated
			Florida Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Screenplay	Nominated
			Gérardmer Film Festival	Jury Prize	Won
			Imagine Film Festival	Silver Scream Award	Won
			London Critics Circle Film Awards	Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker	Nominated
			Online Film Critics Society Awards	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			San Diego Film Critics Society	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			San Francisco Film Critics Circle	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
			Toronto Film Critics Association Awards	Best First Feature	Won
			Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards Saturn Awards	Best Director	Nominated
				Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
				Best Director	Nominated
				Best Writing	Nominated
2025		Civil War	Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Original Screenplay	Nominated
2026			28 Years Later BAFTA Awards	Outstanding British Film	Nominated

                     

317- ] English Literature - Alex Garland

317- English Literature

Alex Garland

 Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English author, film and television show maker. He rose to prominence with his novel The Beach (1996). He received praise for writing the Danny Boyle films 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel, 28 Years Later (2025), and Sunshine (2007), as well as Never Let Me Go (2010) and Dredd (2012). In video games, he co-wrote Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) and was a story supervisor on DmC: Devil May Cry (2013).

Garland made his directorial debut when he wrote and directed the sci-fi thriller Ex Machina (2014). He earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and won three British Independent Film Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best British Independent Film for the film. His second film, Annihilation (2018), an adaptation of the 2014 novel, was a critical success. He wrote, directed and executive produced the FX miniseries Devs (2020) followed by the horror thriller Men (2022), and the dystopian action thriller Civil War (2024). He also co-directed the war film Warfare (2025). The three films were produced by A24.

Early life and education

Alexander Medawar Garlandwas born in London on 26 May 1970, the son of psychologist Caroline (née Medawar) and political cartoonist Nicholas Garland. Alexander has a younger brother and two older paternal half-siblings. He is the maternal grandson of writer Jean Medawar and Nobel Prize-winning biologist Peter Medawar. Garland was educated at University College School in Hampstead and graduated from the University of Manchester in Manchester with an art history degree.

Career

Novels

Garland's first novel, The Beach, was published in 1996. Based on his travels across Europe and Thailand, it tells the story of a young English backpacker who discovers an unspoiled seashore occupied by a community of like-minded backpackers. The novel is noted for its references to drug culture, sequences of hallucinations, and unique depictions of excess and utopia. The Beach was initially met with positive reviews, and with a spreading word of mouth response, the novel grew in popularity; it led some critics to regard Garland a key voice of Generation X. He would later speak of his discomfort with the fame The Beach brought him. The Beach has been translated into 25 different languages and sold close to 700,000 copies by the start of 1999. It was developed into 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2003, the novel was Ranked 103 in BBC's The Big Read poll.

Garland's The Tesseract (1998) is a non-linear narrative with several interwoven characters, set in Manila, Philippines. The novel is characterized by a post-modernist narrative style and structure. It explores several themes such as love and violence through each character's circumstance and context of surroundings as well as seemingly inconsequential actions and the repercussions of those actions on other characters. The Tesseract was not a critical or commercial success, but it too was adapted into a film. Throughout his work, Garland has expressed his love of travel (particularly backpacking) and his love of Manila, much of which influenced his work.

Film

In 2002, Garland wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy. He has said that the script was influenced by 1970s zombie films and English science fiction such as The Day of the Triffids. The Resident Evil video game series also influenced 28 Days Later, with Garland crediting the first game for revitalising the zombie genre. Inspiration for the "Rage" virus came from real-world infections such as Ebola and filoviruses. He won a Best Screenplay honor at the 2004 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for his script of the film.

In 2005, Garland wrote a screenplay for a film adaptation of Halo. D. B. Weiss and Josh Olson rewrote this during 2006 for a 2008 release, although the film was later canceled. In 2007, he wrote the screenplay for the film Sunshine, which was his second screenplay to be directed by Danny Boyle and to star Cillian Murphy. Garland served as an executive producer on 28 Weeks Later, the sequel of 28 Days Later. He wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film Never Let Me Go, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. He also wrote the script for Dredd, an adaptation of the Judge Dredd comic book series from 2000 AD. In 2018, Karl Urban, who played the eponymous role in the film, stated that it was Garland who deserved credit for also directing Dredd.

Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a 2014 feature film based on his own story and screenplay, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac. The film won a Jury Prize at the 2015 Gerardmer Film Festival, and earned Garland a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Garland's second film, Annihilation (2018), was based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. Garland described it as "an adaptation [that] was a memory of the book", rather than book-referenced screenwriting, to capture the "dream like nature" and tone of his reading experience. Production began in 2016, and the film was released in February 2018.

In January 2021, Garland was hired to direct his third film, Men, starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear. The film follows a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside after the death of her ex-husband. Released in May 2022, it received generally positive reviews, though its narrative approach received some criticism. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum placed Men on his Best Films of 2022 list.

In April 2022, it was announced that Garland would once again work with A24 for his fourth feature, Civil War, an action epic starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and previous collaborators Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny. The film was released on 12 April 2024. Garland reunited with Boyle to write 28 Years Later, the long-gestating sequel to 28 Days Later, which was the first of an ongoing trilogy of zombie films. The film was released by Sony on 20 June 2025. Its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which Garland returned to write, was released on 13 January 2026, and was directed by Nia DaCosta. Garland is slated to write the yet unnamed third film in the 28 Years Later trilogy, which will again be directed by Boyle and serve as the fifth overall instalment in the 28 Days Later film series.

In February 2024, it was revealed that Charles Melton was in talks to star in Garland's upcoming untitled war film with A24. This project marks the second collaboration between Garland and Ray Mendoza, who served as the military supervisor for Civil War. The pair wrote and co-directed the film.[30] The following month, Joseph Quinn, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Kit Connor, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter and Finn Bennett joined the ensemble cast, and the film was revealed to be titled Warfare. The same month, Garland stated that he would not direct any films in the "foreseeable future" after the release of Civil War and that his co-directorial work on Warfare was "more of a supporting character" to Mendoza's. However, in May 2025, it was announced that Garland's next project would be a film adaptation of the 2022 video game Elden Ring.

Television

Garland wrote, served as executive producer, and directed the eight-episode miniseries Devs about the "mysterious ongoings at a tech company", for FX. The series was greenlit in August 2018, and premiered 5 March 2020 on FX on Hulu.[34] It stars Ex Machina and Annihilation actress Sonoya Mizuno, alongside Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, and Alison Pill. Spaeny, who did not audition for the role as Garland had wanted her specifically for it said that Devs was short for Development, and the series would explore the idea of the multiverse.

In May 2022, a television series based on Never Let Me Go was optioned at FX, to be executive produced by Garland, who previously wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film adaptation. It would have premiered on Hulu in the United States, Star in other territories and Star+ in Latin America with Viola Prettejohn, Tracey Ullman and Kelly Macdonald starring. In February 2023, it was announced that FX had cancelled the series before production began.

Video games

Garland and Tameem Antoniades co-wrote the video game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They won a 2011 award from the Writer's Guild of Great Britain. Garland also served as a story supervisor on the game DmC: Devil May Cry in 2013. 

316- ] English Literature - Alex Garland

316- ] English Literature

Alex Garland

 British novelist, screenwriter, and director

What is Alex Garland known for?

What was Alex Garland’s first successful novel?

How did Alex Garland transition from novels to screenwriting and directing?

Alex Garland (born May 26, 1970, London, England) is a British novelist, screenwriter, and director known for such films as Ex Machina (2014), Annihilation (2018), Civil War (2024), and Warfare (2025). His films often explore science fiction themes and dystopian futures.

Early life

Garland was born in London to Caroline and Nicholas Garland. His mother was a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and his father was a political cartoonist for newspapers. Growing up around his father’s journalist friends, Garland initially wanted to be a journalist and has fond memories of foreign correspondents coming back from Cambodia or Vietnam with great stories and small gifts. “I wanted to be a journalist, and I planned to be a journalist, and then I found that I couldn’t write nonfiction,” he told GQ magazine in 2024. “I wanted to write nonfiction. I still almost exclusively read nonfiction, but I couldn’t write it.” Garland earned a degree in art history from the University of Manchester and initially tried his hand at drawing comic books.

The Beach and breakout success

In 1996 Garland published his first novel, The Beach, at age 26. The book, which is about young travelers from the United States and Europe who are living in a secluded island paradise in Thailand, was a major success and reprinted 25 times in a single year. In 2000 The Beach was adapted into a movie of the same name, directed by British filmmaker Danny Boyle, with the screenplay by John Hodge, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Garland admitted to feeling uncomfortable with the novel’s popularity, saying that he never had great ambitions to be a novelist and that he experienced what is now known as imposter syndrome. But when he stepped onto the film set during the making of The Beach, Garland said, he felt much more at home, preferring the collaborative process of filmmaking to the solitude of writing books.

Early work in filmmaking

After The Beach Garland wrote the screenplay for the 2002 zombie movie 28 Days Later, reuniting with Boyle as director. His second novel, The Tesseract (1998), was adapted into a 2003 movie of the same name, for which he cowrote the screenplay. He collaborated with Boyle again on Sunshine (2007), about astronauts attempting to reignite a dying Sun. Garland then cowrote several more screenplays, including Never Let Me Go (2010), based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel, and Dredd (2012). In 2014 he wrote and directed Ex Machina, about a reclusive tech genius who creates the first AI robot, named Ava. “I feel more attached to this film, I feel more strongly about this film than anything I’ve worked on up till now,” he told The Guardian soon after its release. “I think it’s the best-realized thing I’ve done.” He subsequently cowrote and directed Annihilation (2018), about a team of scientists exploring a mysterious zone of alien influence.

In 2020 Garland dived further into science fiction with Devs, an eight-part streaming series on the FX network, about the head of a tech company (played by Nick Offerman) who builds a quantum computer capable of glimpsing both the distant past and the future. Garland has expressed concern that society places too much trust in tech leaders, noting that corporations are not subject to the same checks and balances as governments, even though they can rival nation-states in power, and Devs explores these thoughts.

Civil War, Warfare, and 28 Years Later

Garland wrote and directed one of the most talked about films of recent years, Civil War (2024), which imagines a near-future in which the United States is in the throes of a modern-day internecine war after 19 states have seceded. This time Offerman plays an authoritarian three-term president, and Kirsten Dunst stars as a veteran war photojournalist. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, a soldier played by Dunst’s husband, actor Jesse Plemons, snarls, “What kind of American are you?”

Although the movie was widely praised for its emotional impact, some critics were puzzled by the origins of the conflict and the unlikely alliance of California and Texas. The New York Times praised the movie as a “blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction,” whereas a “Critic’s Notebook” column in The Hollywood Reporter offered a more critical take, under the headline “The Compellingly Packaged Cowardice of Civil War.”

Garland defended the film’s clarity: “I personally think questions are answered,” he said at a 2024 South by Southwest Film & TV panel a day after the film’s world premiere. “There is a fascist president who smashed the Constitution and attacked [American] citizens. And that is a very clear, answered statement. If you want to think about why Texas and California might be allied, and put aside their political differences, the answer would be implicit in that. So I think answers are there, but you have to step to it and not expect to be spoon-fed these things. It makes assumptions about the audience.” 

315- ] English Literature - Alex Garland

315- ] English Literature

Alex Garland

British novelist, screenwriter, and director

Garland at SXSW in 2024

Born  Alexander Medawar Garland

26 May 1970 (age 55)

London, England

Education   University College School

Alma mater University of Manchester

Occupations        

Author , screen writer ,  film director , television director

Years active          1996–present

Spouse        Paloma Baeza

Children     2

Father         Nicholas Garland

Relatives     Peter Medawar (maternal grandfather)

Jean Medawar (maternal grandmother) 

Quick Facts

Born: May 26, 1970, London, England (age 55)

Notable Works: “The Tesseract” “Civil War” “Devs” “Ex Machina” “The Beach” “Warfare”

Garland released two films in the first half of 2025. Warfare was cowritten and codirected with Ray Mendoza, a former U.S. Navy SEAL and the military adviser for Civil War. It follows a Navy SEAL team on a mission in Iraq and is based on a real operation in which Mendoza took part during the U.S. battle for control of Al-Ramādī in the Iraq War. The New York Times called Warfare “a tough, relentless movie about life and death in battle…a purposely sad, angry movie, and as much a lament as a warning.” Warfare was followed by 28 Years Later, the long-awaited sequel to 28 Days Later, for which Garland again reunited with Boyle, their first collaboration in nearly two decades.