Tessa Thompson did a lot with a little in Creed, imbuing a rote romantic lead character with enough substance to spackle over the narrative demand that she back Adonis Creed’s dream even after he punched out her musical touring partner. So now she’ll get her chance to steer the action, as Thompson is currently up for a role in the Alex Garland (Ex Machina, here’s our review) adaptation of the Jeff VanderMeer science fiction horror novel Annihilation.

Annihilation is about a team of four women scientists sent into the mysterious Area X, an alien zone that has overwhelmed much of the East Coast with a new and aberrant ecosystem.

Jeff VanderMeer's 'Southern Reach Trilogy'

- 'Annihilation'

Over the course of the Southern Reach Trilogy, of which Annihilation is the first entry, VanderMeer slowly uncovers the sinister heart of Area X and the twisted motives of the research group that sacrifices team after team in an effort to understand it.

Annihilation is preparing to shoot this spring. After Garland made the AI parable Ex Machina one of the best science fiction movies of last year it will be exciting to see what he can do with one of the most influential sci-fi novels of the decade.

Unlike so much of the sci-fi that comes to screens, Annihilation is truly outlandish and strange, both an ode to the cosmic, mysterious horrors of H.P. Lovecraft and a baffling puzzle box in its own right; a novel truly worthy of the label “speculative” fiction.