Ex-Machina director Alex Garland’s follow-up, Annihilation, looks set to get an international release on Netflix just three weeks after its theatrical release in the US as the streaming service is currently in talks with Paramount/Skydance negotiating a deal.

Related: Watch the teaser trailer for Annihilation here

Based on the Southern Reach series of books by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation has Natalie Portman leading a cast which includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez and Thor: Ragnarok’s Tessa Thompson. Garland’s Ex Machina’s standout Oscar Isaac also appears as Portman’s husband.

After the husband (Isaac) of a biologist (Portman) turns up missing, she volunteers for a secret mission into alien territory — a cordoned-off forest where a shape-shifting, Aurora Borealis-looking being awaits. Seems that previous attempts to explore the area met with disastrous results.

Garland’s Ex-Machina grossed a $25.4 million in the US but only $11.3 million from international revenues, so having Annihilation stream on Netflix for international audiences could prove a wise move on the studio’s part, it would be accessible to a wider audience who wouldn’t necessarily go out of their way to the cinema to watch the film.

If the deal goes through, it would be the second similar deal as the one Netflix have come to with New Line on its sequel to Shaft, Netflix paid more than half that film’s $30 million budget and it presented itself as a new model for films that prove challenging on the international front, this comes from the newly released stats that 66% of Netflix viewing hours in the UK alone is through connected TVs – the highest across Europe.