The duo, who have teamed up on The Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002), Ex Machina (2014), and Civil War (2024), spoke at Edinburgh Film Fest event to a jam-packed room of industry professionals and fans.

Garland and Macdonald discussed how they came to work together, as well as a few rows they’ve had over the years. Garland, who began his career as a novelist with The Beach before pivoting into screenwriting and, eventually, directing, admitted that while he doesn’t particularly enjoy directing, there is one film, his debut directorial feature, that he considers his top pick from an impressive resume.

Ex Machina came at the right time

“I enjoyed Ex Machina very much… It was an easy film to make. It was logistically easy, and that helped. We had four weeks in London studio Pinewood on a sound stage, two weeks in Norway on location. We had a very small cast.”

Ex Machina stars Domnhall Gleeson as a young programmer who becomes part of a bizarre experiment at the house of a genius scientist (Oscar Isaac) where he forms a relationship with a female robot (Alicia Vikander).

Garland discussed some “toxic” films he and Macdonald have made, defined by “bitching” and “fallings out,” and why Ex Machina came at just the right time.

“Speaking for myself, but I always speak for Andrew too,” he said, “we had just done a sequence of toxic movies and toxic film sets are extraordinarily unpleasant places to be. You cannot escape the bitching, the factionalization, the departments falling out with each other. They’re just terrible. And I think Ex Machina came as an antidote to that. It was the precise opposite.”

Garland and Macdonald spoke about the upcoming trilogy of films after apocalyptic thrillers 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. In 2025, 28 Years Later, with a budget of around $75 million, will mark the start of a set of three films from Boyle, Garland and Macdonald. “We’re making, hopefully three more 28 films with the first one called 28 Years Later that Alex has written, and Danny has directed, and has finished shooting,” Macdonald said. “Then we’re just about to start, tomorrow morning, actually, part two. And then we hope there’s gonna be a third part and it’s a trilogy.”

Garland and Macdonald separately touched on the difficulties of making the recently-released Civil War, set in a dystopian future America where a team of military-embedded journalists are attempting to reach Washington D.C. before rebel factions get to the White House.

“We literally couldn’t go to America,” Macdonald said of the COVID pandemic complications. “We had to wait and then we had to get special visas to go. And we made it just at the tail end of COVID. We made it with the backing of A24, who, from a producer point of view, were just amazing, because they backed what Alex wanted to do with one of the biggest budgets they had ever spent at that time.”

Civil War, written and directed by Garland, has grossed over $122 million worldwide.

Edinburgh Film Festival runs until Aug. 21.