Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cliff Curtis, Michelle Yeoh, Benedict Wong, Rose Byrne, and Cillian Murphy in Sunshine Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

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With such a diverse group of characters — played by Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, and Rose Byrne — did you have to "group cast" in order to get the chemistry right?
No, you can't do that, really. It's funny how you cast an ensemble — you have to start somewhere. You have to make some commitment and then fill in everybody else. But that doesn't mean that the last person you cast isn't as important as the first person. So we cast Michelle first, oddly enough. I sort of offered her any of the parts, really. Because they're not gender-specific or race- or nationality-specific. She picked Corazon, which was originally meant to be Mexican, I think. But it doesn't matter. So we picked her, then began to pick people. I met actors here like Chris and Troy Garity, who are fantastic actors. Then Cillian I got, obviously, from 28 Days Later. And then Rose I had seen in Troy and, like a lot of people, I was really taken with her. Cliff I knew from Whale Rider and Training Day…it's great, you get to select some really great actors.

Will you be getting angry letters from scientists about this movie, or is the science sound?
It's quite sound. There are some extraordinary liberties taken, as you can expect. And I am not a scientist in the end. Though I did listen to it, and some of it was fascinating, utterly amazing. A lot of it is basically ungraspable, really. But my loyalty is to the story, the narrative, and the characters, not to the science in the end. So the science is the first to go, if necessary. Having said that, though, there is a lot of verisimilitude, a lot of research and realism that actually…The opening of the movie is particularly based on an actual scenario.

Was there anything in particular in the story that changed once you got into the science?
Oh, yeah, lots of it. It developed constantly. There was constant rewriting going on. As the scientists came onboard, as we found out more about what we were talking about, there was constant rewriting going on in that respect. But also, Alex, the writer, is more interested in science than me &#!51; he got it out of science magazines. He receives all these science magazines all the time, so I think the premise of it came from there. That's where it originated.

What is the appeal of science fiction to you as a director, you seem drawn to it…
Well, it's over. [laughs] Directors only ever do one. It's interesting, apart from your George Lucas, directors only go into space once. It's just absolutely exhausting doing it. So there is no appeal anymore. But what appeal there was, was always a love of sci-fi as a consumer. I really love watching them. Not so much the fantasy ones, more the serious sci-fi; the kind of realism that makes you feel it's possible even if it's not. I guess for any director, it's creating a whole world, because you literally create it from the laces up. You create everything and seal it up into this hermetically sealed world. That is the ultimate sort of toy set, isn't it? You make your own toys and then play with them. There is an attractive side to that. I mean, it can become very frustrating as well, because you can't suddenly introduce new ideas and go, "Oh, what about if she runs into this guy…" You just can't do that. But I think every director should have a go at it. I think there's only one thing that's more difficult and that's a musical. A modern-day musical would be as tough, I would imagine, to pull off.