Flash Gordon Director Mike Hodges Dead at 90

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British director Mike Hodges, known for films like Flash Gordon and Croupier, has died. He was 90.

His death was confirmed to NBC News by producer and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead collaborator Mike Kaplan. According to Kaplan, Hodges died on Saturday at his home in Dorset, England, due to heart failure.

A representative for Hodges did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

Hodges' longstanding career dates back to the 1950s.

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Before getting a start in film, he spent two years in mandatory national service on a royal navy minesweeper, which he credits as the inspiration for his first film, Get Carter.

In a letter published by The Guardian in May, he explained: "For two years, my middle-class eyes were forced to witness horrendous poverty and deprivation that I was previously unaware of. I went into the navy as a newly qualified chartered accountant and complacent young Tory, and came out an angry, radical young man."

"Twenty years later, when I was asked to adapt Ted Lewis's great book, I recognized that world and attached my own experiences to it," he added.

His second film, Pulp, came only a year after Get Carter's 1971 release, with Hodges' directorial talent rising to prominence with 1980's Flash Gordon.

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The space film gained an instant cult following, referenced throughout pop culture even 40 years after its debut. Although based on the 1930s comic strip of the same name, Hodges told the BBC in 2020 that he "honestly thought that it would never see the light of a projector."

Although Hodges' career expanded across multiple crime dramas, his work also shined on television, directing 1984's Squaring The Circle and 1994's Dandelion Dead, which earned a 1995 BAFTA.

His last project came in the form of a fiction novel titled Watching the Wheels Come Off in 2010.

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Following the news of his death, film and comic book writer Brian Lynch shared his condolences and respect for the deceased director.

"Mike Hodges, director of FLASH GORDON, has passed. Finally saw this movie during the pandemic and it brought me such joy. Have watched it a bunch of times since. Nothing else like it. Rest in Peace, sir," he wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.

Hodges is survived by his wife, Carol Laws, and his two sons, Ben and Jake Hodges, according to The Guardian.