IN 2010, GARETH EDWARDS entered the feature filmmaking arena with Monsters – one hell of a mic-drop debut. It was an original sci-fi film that he wrote, directed, lit as the cinematographer, production-designed and created the visual effects for, on a shoestring budget of half a million US dollars.
His reward? The Hollywood studios handed unto him a Godzilla movie (2014) and a Star Wars movie, Rogue One (2016). Both of those amply funded studio films were well-received and made money. And then Edwards just left the chaos of Hollywood… on purpose.
“I needed to get off the merry-go-round, do you know what I mean?” Edwards tells SFX about his decision to put the proverbial breaks on his directorial career for a few years. “In Hollywood, you can get stuck on the hamster wheel, or whatever analogy you want to use. I just wanted to get off and have a break to take some time thinking about the next thing.”
His successes meant there was no industry-imposed “director’s jail” for Edwards to grapple with. Rather, it was an existential one. “I got to make a very low-budget science fiction film with , and I realised there were some serious advantages to having no money,” he says. “It was kind of a shock to have all the money you could ever want, and still be limited. I felt like if I could somehow get that big bag of cash and send it, the possibilities would have been infinite. And so, in a weird way, I was trying to find that kind of scenario again. I was as much interested in the process of how to make the film as I was the idea.”
