Fantasy films tend to skew towards what Tolkien fantasy was, which is that the humans, the Hobbits and the cute creatures are the good guys, and everything that's ugly are the bad guys.

Every film I try and make it the way I see it in my head, and it really just depends on the script and the people I'm working with or whatever interests me at that particular time.

I think I was brought up with games and I don't think that they're just Pac-Man or Space Invaders. I think we've moved on, I think that there are stories being told and worlds being explored.

I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write...He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.

For me, two of my favourite science fiction films are Blade Runner, which is fantastic, and Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. Both of those were smart science fiction films hitting more of a medium budget, and I desperately hope there is an audience for that kind of film because I would love that to be my next film, on that kind of scale.

When Peter Jackson did The Lord of the Rings trilogy with Fellowship of the Ring, not everyone had read Tolkien, and yet somehow with that scope and the spectacle of that fantasy, people were willing to give it a shot. And when they watched the first one, the characters drew them in and they started understanding the story. And then, all of a sudden, they were The Lord of the Rings fans, even if they never read Tolkien.

I think that idea of being far away from the people that you love is something that everyone can relate to.