Zendaya is to star in the next film from Ex Machina and Civil War director Alex Garland – an untitled sci-fi film in the works at A24.

Writer-director Alex Garland is currently busy on the biggest film of his career to date: an adaptation of FromSoftware’s grimdark action-RPG, Elden Ring. Shooting on the $100m epic ended over the summer, which means there’s a lengthy bout of post-production ahead – the film isn’t due for release until March 2028.

In the interim, Garland has another project in the works at indie studio A24. It doesn’t have a title as yet, but it’s said to be in the sci-fi genre, and Variety reports that Dune and Euphoria star Zendaya will have a role in it.

Whatever the film is, it marks a welcome return to sci-fi for the director who previously brought us Ex Machina, Annihilation, the TV series Devs, and as a screenwriter, Sunshine, and the 28 franchise.

The novelist turned filmmaker has constantly shifted genres over the past couple of decades or so, with his other work including 2024’s intense dystopian road trip drama, Civil War, and his similarly unsparing Warfare, which he directed in collaboration with veteran Ray Mendoza. Then there was his odyssey into folk horror, 2022’s Men, which featured standout performances from Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear, an actor of many faces.

Podcast: In conversation with Alex Garland

There was a period, not too long ago, where Garland appeared to be growing weary of directing movies; in 2022, he said that Civil War would be his “last film as a director for at least a while,” adding that he would instead write scripts for other filmmakers.

The results were the 28 Days Later sequels 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – directed by Danny Boyle and Nia DaCosta respectively – plus a third film in the new trilogy that may or may not be shot.

Weeks after the release of Warfare, however, Garland was announced as the director of Elden Ring. So if he did take a step back from directing, it wasn’t a particularly long hiatus – which, for this writer, is arguably a good thing.

Ex Machina and Annihilation were both intelligent, gripping sci-fi thrillers; the 2020 sci-fi series Devs was, as we wrote last year, a little too ahead of its time. It depicted a world dominated by arrogant tech bros determined to create a digital god – and it aired years before the wider public realised that this is exactly what Silicon Valley has been trying to do.

Garland is set to begin filming his new sci-fi film in 2027. We’ll bring you more as we hear it.