28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have finally reunited to make a sequel to their zombie (or, if you prefer, infected people) movie classic. As we reporter earlier this year, this sequel is set up at Sony, is going to be called 28 Years Later, and it’s meant to launch a whole trilogy of 28 Days Later sequels. The theatrical release date is June 20th, 2025 – and during a recent interview, Boyle revealed that we might have seen a 28 Days Later follow-up from him and Garland earlier, if not for the fact that they scrapped the screenplay Garland wrote for a standalone sequel.
Speaking with IndieWire, Boyle was asked if there was a time in the last twenty years when he and Garland had come to the conclusion that they were never going to get around to make a sequel to 28 Days Later. Boyle said, “We flirted with it [for a long time] — that’s me and Alex [Garland] — because it was clear that it had sustained its popularity. Not only the original film, but obviously the stuff like that that builds on the popularity of the idea. We always used to joke that we wish we’d got a percentage of The Walking Dead and The Last of Us and all this kind of stuff. But we’d talk about an idea, and then we did produce an idea. Alex did write a script, which was a weaponize-the-virus script. It’s literally the Alien idea, which is that a corporation, a military, a government, whatever, want to weaponize the virus, and that’s how it stays alive and comes alive again through that process. Any script by Alex is a good script. It’s a decent script, but neither of us were very… You could tell we just were, ‘Yeah, it’s good.’ And whereas when you do something, it’s different. Suddenly, you start talking about what you’d do with it. So we went away, and then he came back with a much bigger idea, and the idea was to withdraw from Europe and to isolate the island. Much like the first film, I think [we] probably [had some] regrets about threatening Europe with it, in terms of story development, that meant it could only go one way. So, the idea was to retrench, and that allowed us to make weirdly a much bigger film, more mythic. And it spread across three films, and two of which we’ve shot, all of which connect characters ultimately, which is how Cillian Murphy eventually appears. He’s executive producer on this one, and of course, we were shameless, and he was understandably in approval about this, about using his name to try and get the financing and saying, ‘You go with his story package, and you’ll eventually meet Cillian, and it will become his film.’ And straightaway, as soon as we started discussing it like that, it just had a degree of invention that was much greater than the weaponized idea. It was much more character-committed, because it was built on the scaffolding of these characters.“
The cast of 28 Years Later includes Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (The Fall Guy), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Alfie Williams (His Dark Materials), and Erin Kellyman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Kellyman is the only one on that list who hasn’t gotten a character poster (yet). In the original film, Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) played bicycle courier Jim, who wakes up from a coma to find himself in an apocalyptic England that’s overrun by people who have been infected by a rage virus. Boyle and Garland went through several endings for 28 Days Later before landing on the one movie-goers saw in theatres – and that ending was the only one where Jim survived. So he’s still out there, ready to live through another rage virus nightmare 28 years later. He may not be in the first 28 Years Later, but he’s supposed to come back “in a surprising way” in the second movie.
As The Hollywood Reporter previously noted, “The 2002 film grossed $82.7 million globally and spawned a sequel, 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, though Boyle and Garland were only nominally involved as executive producers.” Speaking with Empire, Garland said (with thanks to Screen Rant for sharing the quote), “[28 Years Later is] not in conflict [with 28 Weeks Later, but] canon [is] not a very Danny Boyle word.” Boyle added, “It’s not mapped out like a scientific formula.” When 28 Years Later came up during an interview with IndieWire, Fiennes decided to go ahead and tell us all about it: “Britain is 28 years into this terrible plague of infected people who are violent, rabid humans with a few pockets of uninfected communities. And it centers on a young boy who wants to find a doctor to help his dying mother. He leads his mother through this beautiful northern English terrain. But of course, around them hiding in forests and hills and woods are the infected. But he finds a doctor who is a man we might think is going to be weird and odd, but actually is a force for good.“
Now we have an official synopsis to go by as well: Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle and Academy Award-nominated writer Alex Garland reunite for 28 Years Later, a terrifying new story set in the world created by 28 Days Later. It’s been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.
Thanks to their deal with Sony, each of these new films will be receiving a theatrical release and will have budgets in the $60 million range. 28 Years Later has a budget of $75 million. Boyle and Garland are producing 28 Years Later with Bernie Bellew, original producer Macdonald, and Peter Rice, who was the head of Fox Searchlight Pictures when that company backed 28 Days Later. Murphy is executive producing.
Garland also wrote the screenplays for the sequels that will come after 28 Years Later. Of the two 28 Years Later projects currently in the works, Boyle directed the first one, then passed the helm over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta for the sequel, titled 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple. The second film has already wrapped production. Boyle might circle back to direct 28 Years Later Part III, but that one doesn’t have a full greenlight yet.
Despite the trilogy plans, Boyle says audiences won’t be left feeling like they’ve only seen half (or one-third) of a film when they go to see 28 Years Later. “There’s a setup that’s significant. It’s not sequel-based. It’s not like, oh, the story hasn’t finished. … The film is complete, and then you get this little tail that appears that’s, oh, God. Anyway, we’ll see what people think of it. It is different.“
Are you looking forward to 28 Years Later? What do you think of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland scrapping their “weaponize the virus” sequel script? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
