If there’s one thing Alex Garland is happy about, it’s that filmgoers across Canada will get a chance to see his mind bending, sci-fi horror Annihilation in the manner he intended it to be seen: on the big screen.

“Really glad,” he says, with a smile.

It’s a visually dazzling, existential excursion from the Oscar-nominated writer-director. But to Paramount, the studio distributing the film in Canada and the U.S., the concept proved to be too much of a head trip and the studio opted to sell the film to Netflix internationally.

— Lena’s husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) — none to enter the area have ever returned. Based on the first instalment in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, the film follows a five-woman team, led by Natalie Portman’s biologist character Lena and an army psychologist played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, as they probe the aftermath of a mysterious meteor strike somewhere on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Except for one survivorLena’s husband Kane (Oscar Isaac)none to enter the area have ever returned.

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Garland, who wrote the 1996 novel The Beach as well as the screenplays for Dredd, 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go, is not thrilled that a limited number of genre fans will be able to see Annihilation in theatres. The “unusualness” of VanderMeer’s story, the bright pops of colour, the bits of psychedelic fantasy and the haunting score from composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow combine for an experience, Garland says, that was intended to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

“Most stories people encounter, are basically retellings of other stories and this is clearly not that,” he says. “There’s a hallucinatory, dreamlike quality the book has and I was intrigued by the idea of trying to capture that on film.”

He’s not down on TV (Garland’s next project is an eight-hour series for FX), but there’s a glint in his eye when he hears the specs for a theatre in Toronto that’s set to show Annihilation in its full glory when it opens Friday.

As Annihilation makes its way from page to screen, we caught up with Garland, who made his directorial debut with 2015’s Ex Machina, to ask him about alien life, Star Wars and whatever happened to his idea for a third 28 Days Later movie.

What films did you take cues from when you were making Annihilation?

There are films that I can see being an influence – 2001; Alien; Stalker; The Thing. But at the same time, we wanted to do something different. In some ways, when you make a movie, what you are is lucky. So you really have to try to do something new.

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Annihilation is a bit of a twist on the alien invasion movie genre. Do you think we’ll ever encounter aliens in real life?

Just given the size of the universe and the distance between us and other planets and star systems, I have close to zero expectations of aliens ever coming here or us ever going there. But do I think alien life exists in the universe? Yes, absolutely. I also feel pretty sure we’re never going to meet it.

The movie paints a world filled with terror, death and ambiguity. What do you want to leave people thinking at the end of Annihilation?

Some films are very clear in their statements and intent. You go in there, watch the film, you get all of it and then you leave. That’s a perfectly legitimate thing, but that’s not what this film is. Annihilation doesn’t spoon feed anything. So I hope people see it with an open mind and engage with it. If that happens; if people are willing to step to the film, what they’ll get is an open circle that hopefully will stay with them for a bit. Maybe they’ll have a conversation with a friend about it or some thoughts about it that will hopefully give it some life outside of the theatre.

Did making the movie give you a feeling that you might be able to take on something bigger like, say, Star Wars?

No, I’ve got zero interest in that. I don’t want to work on franchises. I’ve got no problem with people who do want to work on them, but I really don’t want that.

You mentioned in a recent reddit AMA that given the chance to direct a superhero movie you’d pick DC’s Swamp Thing. Why did you pick him?

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Swamp Thing was created by these two guys in the 1970s, Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson. They ran that title for a bit and then it died. Then it came back in the ‘80s and it was run by another group of people and around issue 20, Alan Moore came in and he just did a run on that comic book that was just spectacular. In a way, it’s sad that it’s not remembered, but that was some of the most brilliant comic book writing I’ve ever read and the artists working on it did really beautiful work. When I saw that reddit question, I gave my instinctive answer, but it’s not meant to be taken seriously.

Whatever happened to a third 28 Days Later movie?

We talked about it. We’ve got a cool idea for a third one, but it’s not something I want to work on directly. I had the story idea and (director) Danny (Boyle) liked it. It was a 28 Years Later storyline, but someone else has got to write it. I also think in truth that 28 Days was a small British movie. It’s not a big, Hollywood blockbuster. It’s not something that people are out there saying, ‘Please give us another.’

In 2012, you tried to reboot Judge Dredd. It didn’t connect, but there was a sequel comic that people went ballistic for a few years later. Did that make you think about why your version didn’t work?

I think what went wrong with it is what goes wrong with a lot of the things I write. It looks mainstream, but it actually isn’t. When you look at Dredd, it’s a pretty psychotic movie. It’s really violent, it’s got loads of drugs, it’s got a weird nihilism to it. There are some people that really dig that, but there are a lot that really don’t and they see something like that and think, ‘What’s this weird s—?’ I think one of the problems I’ve got is I write things that look more mainstream than they really are. And I’m afraid that’s about to happen (with Annihilation).