Scottish director David Mackenzie has a number of projects in the works after Fuze, including an ambitious space sci-fi epic. Director David Mackenzie, who previously brought us such films as Hell Or High Water and last year’s Relay, returns to thriller territory this week with Fuze. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, it’s ... Exclusive: Fuze and Hell Or High Water director David Mackenzie working on a space sci-fi film
Scottish director David Mackenzie has a number of projects in the works after Fuze, including an ambitious space sci-fi epic.
Director David Mackenzie, who previously brought us such films as Hell Or High Water and last year’s Relay, returns to thriller territory this week with Fuze. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, it’s a tense yarn about the discovery of an unexploded WWII bomb in the heart of London and a daring heist that unfolds on its periphery.
Film Stories spoke to Mackenzie about Fuze late last month, and as part of that interview, the filmmaker told us about some of the other projects he has in the works.
One of these is a “space sci-fi thing” he’s been working on for some time – a project, the director tells us, that has gone from a feature film script to a TV show and back again over its development to date.
Although primarily known as a feature director, Mackenzie previously directed episodes of the 2022 crime series, Under The Banner Of Heaven, starring Andrew Garfield. But while his space project could work well as a TV series, due to its scale, Mackenzie adds that it’s since morphed back into a movie in more recent times.
Read more: Hell Or High Water | Why it’s still one of the great thrillers of the past decade
“It’s permutated from being a very long feature film to an episodic TV thing, and now going back to [film],” he says. “It takes place over 100 years and space. So there’s massive passage-of-time issues, and casting issues, and hair and make-up issues. It’s very epic, and would therefore lend itself to episodic TV. I’ve gone full circle in terms of TV – I like the arc of a movie… I’ve gone back to the idea of cinema as a whole, rather than things chopped up.”
Mackenzie’s planned excursion into star-faring territory could be his homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey – one of the films he says made him want to become a director.
“I saw it and my brain was altered completely,” he tells us. (There was also a truly bizarre incident that took place after that screening, one involving a cat, which we’ll let you discover in our podcast.)
You can read about Mackenzie’s process of making Fuze on the busy streets of London – and its connection to French New Wave cinema – in our dedicated feature on the subject, which we’ll be bringing you tomorrow (2nd April).
You’ll be able to listen to the full interview with Mackenzie, too, which takes in his early movie-going experiences, making Hell Or High Water, and that startling post-2001: A Space Odyssey screening incident, in our podcast, due to go live on Friday 3rd April.
In the meantime: space opera, from the director who brought us Hell Or High Water? We’d watch that.
Fuze is in UK cinemas from the 3rd April.
