Zendaya's new Alex Garland film is his third since he quit directing

Thirty-one months ago, Alex Garland told the Guardian he was "not planning to direct again in the foreseeable future". Since that sentence was published he has directed one film, started shooting a second, and on Wednesday committed to a third: an untitled sci-fi for A24 with Zendaya in the lead, which TheWrap reported will shoot in 2027. That is a new directing job roughly every ten months from a man who said he had stopped.

The announcement itself is thin, deliberately so. Garland wrote the script and will direct, A24 will make it, the plot is under wraps, and there is no title. Variety and Deadline confirmed the same four facts within hours. What makes it a story is the schedule it lands in, because Garland is currently in post-production on Elden Ring, the most expensive film A24 has ever made, and he will be working on both at once.

The retirement that keeps not happening

Garland has quit directing twice, on the record, with his name attached.

The first time was in 2022, while he was finishing Men and shooting Civil War back to back. He told the New York Times he was "a writer who directs out of convenience" and told Screen Daily that Civil War would "definitely be my last film as a director for at least a while".

The second time was in March 2024, three weeks before Civil War opened. In the Guardian interview he said the job's pressure "doesn't come from the money. It comes from the fact that you're asking people to trust something that, on the face of it, doesn't look very trustworthy." He carved out one exception: Warfare, the Iraq film he had already agreed to co-direct with his Civil War military adviser Ray Mendoza. When the quotes travelled, he told IndieWire it was a break rather than a retirement, as the Playlist reported.

The break lasted about a year. Warfare opened in April 2025. Weeks later, A24 announced Garland would write and direct Elden Ring, the adaptation of FromSoftware's video game, which began shooting in the United Kingdom in April 2026 with Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny and Ben Whishaw, and is dated for 3 March 2028 in IMAX. Now comes the Zendaya film. Three projects, 31 months, two of them signed after the statement they contradict.

Directors' retirement announcements are a genre of their own, and Garland's read less like exits than like renegotiations with a job he finds genuinely painful, made by someone the industry will not let stop. Steven Soderbergh retired in 2013 and has released a film most years since. Quentin Tarantino has promised to stop after his tenth film for a decade and has not made it. The difference is that Garland keeps being handed bigger films each time he says it.

What A24 is spending on a reluctant director

The scale of the bet is easy to miss because nobody involved will confirm a number. The Hollywood Reporter put Elden Ring's budget at well over $100m, as Video Games Chronicle relayed, with around 100 days of principal photography. A24's previous ceiling, per a Deadline report from November 2024, was roughly $70m for Marty Supreme and The Smashing Machine. On those figures the studio has raised its record by at least 43%, and handed the result to a director who has twice said he does not enjoy directing.

The ladder is steeper than it looks. Ex Machina, Garland's 2015 directing debut, which A24 released in the United States, cost a reported $15m. Civil War was reported at around $50m in 2024 and described then as the most expensive film in the company's history. That record stood for a matter of months before the $70m pair overtook it, and Elden Ring has now at least doubled what was A24's ceiling two years ago. Garland's budgets have grown faster between films than most directors' grow in a career, which is a strange trajectory for someone who keeps explaining, politely and in print, that he would rather be at his desk.

Among Elden Ring's producers is Peter Rice, the former Disney television chief who was named Netflix's chief content officer on Wednesday. The deal flow around Garland is starting to look like the deal flow around a franchise.

Zendaya is the other half of the arithmetic. The Drama, her A24 two-hander with Robert Pattinson, cost $28m and opened on 3 April. TheWrap puts its worldwide total near $135m; The Numbers' tally stands at $105.1m, with domestic figures reported only through late May. Even on the lower number that is 3.8 times its budget, which for an adult drama in 2026 is the kind of multiple studios build slates around. Her year beyond A24 has been larger still: she appears in The Odyssey, still the second-biggest film of 2026, and in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the biggest.

Who pays for the schedule

Somebody always absorbs a director's overcommitment, and this time it appears to be Danny Boyle. The third film in the 28 Years Later trilogy, which Garland wrote, is on hold, and Boyle has said Garland's schedule is part of the reason, per TheWrap. A writer who directs out of convenience now has a directing diary so full it is blocking his writing.

For Zendaya the sequencing is tidier. She wrapped three seasons of Euphoria this year, shoots the Garland film in 2027, and before any of that has a December to get through: Dune: Part Three opens on 18 December, with Elden Ring to follow on 3 March 2028 and the untitled film after that.