Gareth Edwards’ new movie The Creator is an anomaly to modern studio filmmaking. While financed by the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios, the new original sci-fi was made for just $80 million, a fraction of the costs of other similar blockbusters.
The secret, Edwards tells 12DOVE, is bringing the filmmaking techniques he honed making his debut feature Monsters to the movie. This involved filming everything on location and using small shoots where possible, before building VFX on top of the footage.
All in all, the final movie is a ringing endorsement of what can be achieved when you bend the rules of studio filmmaking. It’s also something the director says he’ll bring with him going forward when we quizzed him about if he’d ever helm another franchise after his work on Star Wars prequel Rogue One and Godzilla.
"I think [there are] pros and cons," Edwards replies about potentially returning to a film like that. "The pros of doing something original is you don't have this massive fan base, watching you like a hawk telling you they've ruined their childhoods, you know? I mean, but the downside is, then you finish a film and you don't have this built-in fan base and you have to like to go, 'Please come see the movie and educate everybody.'
"So yeah, I don’t know which is better in that sense. If I did go back to a franchise and I hate that word, it sounds so corporate. But if I did go back to something I grew up loving, I would love to do it more like [The Creator]. I don't want to go back to a studio and have a green screen and things like that. I want to go to real-world places and shoot for real and a lot of my favorite things about this movie are when we did things differently. It led to a lot of little successes. So yeah, if I can combine both of those then maybe that's the sweet spot."
Back in 2016, there were reports that Rogue One screenwriter Tony Gilroy took over from Edwards to handle reshoots on the Star Wars prequel. Addressing his experience on the film recently, the director shared he had no hard feelings over his time on Rogue One, and instead felt incredibly lucky to be involved.
The Creator, which is out in cinemas now, is set in a near future where Artificial Intelligence and humans are at war. A former special forces soldier is tasked with finding the architect of the AI and destroying the world-ending weapon they’ve created. The problem is that the weapon has taken the form of a young child.
For more on the movie, check out our conversations with Edwards about using guerilla filmmaking techniques and why he took a break from directing after Rogue One.
