What is Movie News After Dark? First, it is hoping that you had a great weekend. Because it did. It went to the drive-in, had great movie discussions and watched a Michael Bay film about ‘splosions. It looks forward to spending the week sharing with you the hottest tids and bits of the movie news world. Second, it’s not a person. It knows this. This makes it sort of sad. Christian Annyas has curated a very interesting gallery of prints by Saul Bass (a personal favorite of mine), and the DVD covers that have come from his work. It’s sad to see so many companies ditch the poster designs and opt for simpler DVD cover designs, is it not?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

This is one of those good news bad news situations. Everyone loves an underdog story, and that’s where we’ll begin. Gareth Edwards directed a (very) small film called Monsters that saw him multi-tasking like a mad man in the role of director, writer, special effects wizard, best boy, and more, all for under a few hundred thousand dollars.  The story followed two strangers forced to walk through a near future Mexico that is now home to giant alien creatures. He garnered heaps of critical praise for both the film and his ingenuity as the film made the rounds on the festival circuit, and that attention led to it being acquired by Magnolia for a limited theatrical release. That in turn led to Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures offering Edwards the director’s chair on a big budget studio film. That’s the good news. Yay for the little guy! The bad news? That big budget studio film is the remake of Godzilla.

Gareth Edwards is a funny man. You might not know that just from seeing his feature film debut Monsters. You also might not know it from the things he had to do to get the film made. Edwards speaks with the casual tone of a seasoned pro, and after seeing heads on spikes, making his actors eat ants, and making a CGI-heavy film with almost no money, he might just be a few years ahead of his own resume. I got the chance to speak with Edwards, whose film comes out Friday October 29th, and we spoke about the advice he has for aspiring filmmakers, the challenges of shooting in South America and why the worst day of his life happened during production.

Gareth Edwards, who you might get to know better after the release of his ultra-low budget film Monsters in October, has already found a next project that continues the science fiction slant. He’s teaming with Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov (who will produce) on a project with no title or plot synopsis except the vague statement that it will be: “an epic human story, set in a futuristic world without humanity.” Clearly, they’re making Wall-E 2. [Deadline Pluto]

The tone of the thing may oversell the giant monster movie aspect of what is essentially an unscripted drama taking place in the stomping grounds of the extra-terrestrials who have now taken up residence in Northern Mexico, but I realize as I write that sentence that it stills seems incredibly cool. The FSR team got to see Gareth Edwards’s Monsters when it hit Austin for SXSW. The reactions were mixed, but I honestly loved the film. It’s got a creativity and low-budget bargaining that makes it look like a million bucks (for much less than a million bucks). Plus, the lead actors (Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able) have the burden of carrying the entire film. Fortunately, they’re charismatic enough to do it. This first trailer doesn’t give much of an eye into that world, but it should do a bit to tease you with the things that go boom in the night.

If you spent any time checking out our SXSW coverage, you probably noticed a few pieces on Monsters, the romance/horror/alien-love-making-movie-that-isn’t-Splice movie from director Gareth Edwards. You probably also noticed that, like most movies coming out of festivals, there wasn’t a release date for you to hang your excitement on. Without it, your excitement just sat there in the air like a man waiting for a bus in the rain. Fortunately for your excitement, he can rejoice, because his metaphorical bus has arrived.

Just over a year ago, we talked to producer/actor Scoot McNairy about an interesting science fiction film shot without a script. A mumblecore action movie, if you will. Today, we get to preview that exact movie as part of our look ahead to this year’s SX Fantastic line-up.