After helming the excellent low budget sci-fi flick Monsters, Gareth Edwards made the leap to big budget filmmaking with Godzilla. The response to the movie was good and it grossed $529 million on a budget of $160 million, so the director was quickly signed up for the sequel. However, Deadline reveals that Edwards has now decided to drop out of the project.

He’s currently hard at work on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and while no specific details in regards to his departure have been revealed, it’s said that the split was an amicable one.

The trade mentions that Edwards has some other smaller personal projects he’s keen to crack on with after spending the past few years working on huge blockbusters, so that no doubt played a role here. Godzilla 2 has a release date of March 22nd, 2019, and will be followed in 2020 by a crossover which will pit the monster against the iconic King Kong.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Legendary does next, especially as they plucked Edwards out of relative obscurity for the first movie. He certainly made his mark on the franchise anyway, and it’s actually pretty exciting to ponder what the talented Brit will do now that he has the next few years free. Is a Marvel or DC movie too much to hope for?