Paramount has signed a director for its adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation: Alex Garland, whose directorial debut Ex Machina has gotten some attention lately. Variety reports that Garland—who also wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine—will adapt the script and direct. Producer Scott Rudin acquired the rights in 2013.
Annihilation is the first book of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, about a scientific expedition into the closed-off Area X, long since reclaimed by nature and filled with lethal mysteries that have ruined the previous eleven expeditions. Read our review, and an interview with VanderMeer in which he discusses just how alien our world is.