The one that's posted on here isn't available in my country, but I checked out what I assume is the same trailer. Looks cool. I like Alex Garland and The Beach is one of my favorite books (movie's a different story.) Dredd was one of my favorite movies as well and really felt like the comics I remember (I kinda wish they had said that instead of bringing up Sunshine, which totally went to shit for reasons I shouldn't spoil) so I have faith in the guy but I think he's maybe better at writing a world that's more supernatural and comic-esque than a more serious story that reminds me of "Her," but with an actual robot instead of a siri-esque device. Like, I don't even play the games but I could see his vision of Halo becoming one of the few video game movies that works. That's just sort of his headspace. 28 Days Later without Boyle directing probably would've been a big disaster too, as Garland would've made it that much more comic book-esque, with like a boss zombie at the end, which might work for a series like Walking Dead but wouldn't in a 2 hour film.

I hope I'm wrong too, but I was right with Cormac McCarthy's horrible The Counsellor, and Frank Miller. But I was wrong with Ben Affleck!

Personally, I thought The Beach was a great first book by a hippie kid with a lot of talent, a promising future, but ultimately a book written by a kid.

The Tesseract was in my opinion a much better book. He's worked in Hollywood for a while and I think he has a firm grip on that pulse between a commercial blockbuster film and something with a little bit more brains and heart.

I have faith in him, I am only fearful of that possible "plot twist" mentioned above.

I think that's why I like the novel so much: I can imagine Garland sitting around his laptop or typewriter surrounded by empty beer cans and a hashpipe writing a story that was half inspired by some comparative lit classes in college where he learned about Hesse and Grass but prefered Bukowski in his back pocket and.. grass, and some time traveling abroad. Maybe it hit me at the right age and the right time, when I was also trying to write something similar in a cynical drunken state, but it's always in the bottom of my backpack along with Alex Shulgin's Pihkal.

Haha, when I first read the Beach I was 20 and was living in a hippie town called Montezuma, which is right on a tropical beach and nestled between cliffs, with a huge waterfall in the middle of the jungle. So it resonated very much with me too at that age.

Never read Pihkal. Looks like a book I also would have absolutely loved, given I basically spent that age reading Hunter Thompson, Burroughs, Ginsberg.

Haha me too. But I was living in a hippie town called Madison Wisconsin :)

Honestly I was initially excited by the description, as I thought it might be an adaptation of Brian K Vaughn's graphic novel of the same name, and also something I could see Garland approaching w/r/t my above comment: True, Dredd's script wasn't exactly Oscar-worthy, but for me anyway it came from a lot of love for the source material.

That, and Automata's also coming out around the same general time, so this could be the Winter of Paul Blart Mall Cop v. Observe and Report, or Kick-ass and Super, but with Robots.

Although I think I just watched the one on here (the UK one with the DJ Shadow-esque music in the background?) and it's a much more compelling trailer. What's with the Google tag though?

Hey you, Garland also wrote the script for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West! And he supervised the story for the Devil May Cry reboot!

Yeah, really. I liked Dredd, though, and I sorta like the trailer here even if it reminds me of the DON'T DATE ROBOTS bit from Futurama.

Yeah. I didn't know anything about that game but it looks really cool judging by the LPs. W/r/t my comment above, I could see a Halo (or any videogame) movie actually working well in his hands, like he's actually played a lot of Halo. I was one of those haters on District 9 from the get-go, as there was some connection between that and the possible greenlight of a Halo movie (gamers correct me if I'm wrong) and the movie turned out amazing, even if it wasn't directly connected to the Halo universe (again, correct me if I'm wrong.) Garland wasn't involved in D9 at all but if it comes from the heart it comes from the heart.

And Boyle was the one who fucked up The Beach, although there never really needed to be a movie in the first place.