Godzilla is one of cinema's greatest movie monsters. As soon as you think you've put him down for good, the big fella always comes roaring back to life to stomp the world once again.

For the last year or so, we've been following development on the most recent incarnation of the Godzilla movie franchise from Legendary Pictures. In September, we learned that Legendary Pictures wanted to bring the beast back to his roots and deliver a film that was far different than Sony's 1998 remake. Now, we've learned who Legendary and Warner Bros. have chosen to bring the project to fruition - UK director Gareth Edwards.

According to an exclusive report from The Hollywood Reporter, Edwards was chosen for the director's chair after his acclaimed independent sci-fi film Monsters wowed both critics and Hollywood execs. Edwards will work with an as yet undetermined screenwriter, because the original screenwriter, David Callaham, is no longer working on the project.

Screen Rant's Kofi Outlaw gave Monsters a glowing 4/5 star review, remarking that Edwards delivered a uniquely insightful human story using an alien invasion as the premise. If that doesn't make it sound like Edwards is the right guy to bring a CGI-fest like Godzilla to the big screen, bear in mind that Kofi also wrote "the director’s true forte is visual effects, and the CGI used at many points to augment the footage is nearly seamless and really does enhance the real-life atmosphere of the film."

Guillermo del Toro not involved with Godzilla

Given his impressive CGI work on the relatively inexpensive Monsters, it will be interesting to see how much Edwards is able to do with a (presumably) huge budget on Godzilla. My hope is that his instincts as a filmmaker, to employ CGI naturally so as to aid the story, will remain intact during filming. That's not to say that I don't want to see a giant, city-crushing Godzilla; however, I want to see one that I can actually believe in and care about.

I would say that getting Edwards for this film is a big win for Legendary Pictures. The company has been racking up blockbusters left and right (Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and Inception to name two) and this is definitely a strong step toward delivering another quality big-budget film.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter