Level 1 - Absolute Beginner
Zendaya is a famous actress. She acts in many big films. Now she has a new job.
She will be in a new film about the future. The film is science fiction. Science fiction films often have robots, space, or strange new worlds.
The director is a man named Alex Garland. He has made other science fiction films. The film company is called A24.
The story of the film is a secret. Nobody knows what happens in it. People think the filming will start in 2027.
- actress
- A woman who acts in films or on stage.
- famous
- Known by very many people.
- film
- A moving picture that you watch; a movie.
- future
- The time that has not happened yet.
- science fiction
- Stories about the future, space or new science.
- director
- The person who tells the actors what to do in a film.
- secret
- Something that people do not tell others.
- company
- A business that makes or sells things.
Level 2 - Elementary
Zendaya has signed up for a new science fiction film. It will be written and directed by Alex Garland and made by the studio A24.
Garland is well known for clever and unsettling science fiction. He directed Ex Machina, a film about a robot that seems human, and Annihilation, about a dangerous zone where nature behaves strangely. He also directed Civil War.
Almost nothing about the new story has been shared. The studio has not given the film a title and has not described the plot. Reports say that filming is expected to begin in 2027.
Zendaya is one of the busiest actors of her generation. She won awards for the television series Euphoria, and she has appeared in the Dune films and in the tennis drama Challengers. Fans were excited because she rarely works with directors like Garland.
- sign up
- To agree to join a project or a job.
- studio
- A company that makes films.
- plot
- The events that happen in a story.
- title
- The name of a film, book or song.
- unsettling
- Making you feel worried or uncomfortable.
- series
- A set of television programmes with the same characters.
- generation
- All the people born at around the same time.
- rarely
- Almost never; not often.
Level 3 - Intermediate
Zendaya will star in an untitled science fiction film written and directed by Alex Garland for A24, a pairing that surprised almost everyone when it was reported last week. Neither the studio nor the filmmakers have revealed anything at all about the story.
The secrecy is characteristic. Garland built his reputation on films that pose uncomfortable questions rather than deliver reassuring answers. Ex Machina examined whether a machine could convincingly imitate a person, Annihilation turned a biological mystery into something closer to a nightmare, and Civil War imagined a fractured United States through the eyes of war photographers.
For Zendaya the project continues a pattern of choosing directors rather than genres. She won two Emmy awards for the HBO series Euphoria while still in her twenties, and has since worked inside enormous franchises as well as on smaller and stranger films such as the tennis drama Challengers.
Practical details remain thin. Reports indicate that production is being targeted for 2027, which makes a cinema release before 2028 unlikely. No casting beyond Zendaya has been announced, and A24 has said nothing about budget or distribution.
- untitled
- Having no name yet.
- pairing
- The combination of two people working together.
- secrecy
- The practice of keeping information hidden.
- characteristic
- Typical of a particular person or thing.
- reputation
- The opinion that people generally hold about someone.
- fractured
- Broken into separate, divided parts.
- franchise
- A series of films or games built around the same characters or world.
- production
- The process of actually making a film.
Level 4 - Advanced
A24 has spent a decade proving a commercial thesis that the major studios once dismissed as naive: that audiences will turn out for directors rather than for intellectual property. The announcement that Zendaya will star in an untitled science fiction film written and directed by Alex Garland is that thesis in its purest form, a project sold on two names and nothing whatsoever else.
Garland's body of work is unusually coherent. From Ex Machina through Annihilation to Civil War, his films examine the moment at which a system, whether a mind, an ecology or a country, stops behaving according to the rules that are supposed to govern it. He is not a sentimental filmmaker, and his endings characteristically withhold the consolation that genre convention promises.
Zendaya's position is more unusual still. Having secured a foothold inside the largest franchises in cinema, she has spent that leverage on filmmakers rather than on consolidating a brand, alternating blockbusters with films whose appeal is formal rather than spectacular. The Garland project fits that trajectory with some precision, and carries the commercial risk that accompanies it.
What has not been disclosed amounts to almost everything: plot, title, supporting cast, budget and distribution strategy. Reports point to a 2027 production start, which realistically situates the film in 2028. For the moment the interest lies less in the picture itself than in what its existence signals, namely that a performer with the widest commercial options available has chosen the least compromising science fiction director currently working.
- thesis
- A claim or argument put forward and defended.
- intellectual property
- Characters, stories or brands that a company legally owns.
- coherent
- Forming a consistent and logical whole.
- ecology
- A system of living things and their environment.
- sentimental
- Appealing to soft emotion, often in an easy or unearned way.
- consolation
- Comfort offered after something painful.
- leverage
- Influence or bargaining power that can be used to get something.
- trajectory
- The path or direction something follows over time.
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