The Creator’s Gareth Edwards Addresses Returning to Star Wars or Other Major Franchises (Exclusive)

Gareth Edwards is once again making waves with his imaginative take on the sci-fi genre – this time with The Creator, the new film opening in theaters this week. The Creator imagines a world where there is “a war between humans and robots with artificial intelligence,” where John David Washington (Tenet) plays “a former soldier” who “finds the secret weapon: a robot in the form of a young child.”

The Creator has been getting rave reviews – including from ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis, who called the film “astonishingly good. Best film of the year and best sci-fi film in ages, in my opinion.”

Davis also got to sit down with Gareth Edwards and talk about The Creator – and how getting to make that epic sci-fi movie on a modest budget, according to his own creative control, was different than his studio film experiences. By now stories of Edwards’ work on two big 2010s films are infamous: After gaining acclaim for his self-made indie sci-fi/horror film Monsters (2010), he was handed his big break from Warner Bros., directing the first Monsterverse film Godzilla (2014). However, his bold choice to keep the Kaiju king mostly out of the picture until the third act split viewers and $529 million worldwide wasn’t a big enough accomplishment for WB – ironic, since it now stands as the second-highest-grossing MonsteVerse film behind Kong: Skull Island ($566.6M).  

Edwards had a more turbulent experience with this next project, the 2016 prequel/spinoff Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The film’s budget skyrocketed to an estimated $250+ million, while Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy was promoted from uncredited writer to replacement director on the extensive reshoots and re-edits done after Edwards’ principal shoot. Rumors of Edwards and Lucasfilm executives bumping heads only grew as other Star Wars films (Solo, The Last Jedi) had similar creative issues.

Will Gareth Edwards Make Another Star Wars Movie? 

One thing is for sure: the experience of Rogue One adversely impacted Edwards’ career in a big way; The Creator is his first feature-film directorial effort since Rogue One’s release, a span of over half a decade. So after making this latest film, and getting such buzz and praise for it, is Edwards ready for another shot at Star Wars, Marvel, or DC? 

“I like franchises, obviously, or else I wouldn’t have done two of them. So there are things that I would still love to do in that arena,” Edwards explained. He quickly added the caveat that even if working for a big studio, he’d still want to use the practical and immersive world-building approaches he did to make The Creator:

“If I got to do them, I only want to do them if I can use this methodology and bring this stamp to it,” Edwards said. “Because you go into a certain factory, it’s going to turn out all the other things in the factory. So, it’s like trying to escape the factory and just do it this way. If someone was willing to go, ‘Okay, here’s the IP. Here’s the franchise, but go off and do it how you do things.’ That would be probably one of the best-case scenarios, I reckon.” 

Sounds like Gareth Edwards learned something from his first go-round: the benefit of good negotiation.