10 Directors Who Should Helm The X-Men Reboot

Alex Garland is a novelist and screenwriter turned director and hiring him would be a bold statement by FOX because he is one of the best writers around. Garland has become known for writing popular genre films, his credits include 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd - films that have earned cult status because of their intelligent storytelling and great thrills.

Garland also wrote the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, a story that has some transferable elements to the X-Men series. Never Let Me Go was set in an alternative version of Britain where there is an underclass of clones who are educated to be nothing more than organ donors, kept subservient for the rest of humanity. Garland could easily do something similar with the X-Men, showing that they are willing to protect a hates and fears them.

Garland also had great success adapting Judge Dredd to film, using a simple day-in-the-life narrative like Training Day to how horrific life is in Mega City One where crime and riots are rampant: the judges are only able to response to 6% of incidents and people in the profession have a low life expectancy. He showed a love for the source material, helping make an unabashedly violent sci-fi film that's not made enough of these days. Fans of the comics loved it and want a sequel of some sort.

His directional debut was Ex Machina, a taut, Kubrickian style sci-fi thriller about the creation of artificial intelligence. It used its limited setting to great effect as three characters in a claustrophobic environment play mindgames with each other in their battle for survival. It helped make Alicia Vikander popular with genre audiences and she would be a great choice to play Jean Grey.