In its first 24 hours since movie tickets went on sale Tuesday, Sony Pictures’ 28 Years Later has become the best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025, outstripping advance tickets at the same point in time for Sinners and Final Destination: Bloodlines.
The sequel also has outpaced the presales for 2024’s Nosferatu and Alien: Romulus.
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28 Years Later‘s advance-ticket sales record is inclusive of Fandango and all exhibitors.
Momentum started for Oscar winner Boyle’s auteur horror film when its first trailer gained 60.2 million global views in its first 24 hours, becoming the biggest horror trailer launch of 2024, ahead of A Quiet Place: Day One (46.6M views), Smile 2 (33.1M views) and Nosferatu (26.4M views). The trailer topped the Golden Trailer Awards and won in three categories, including best of show, most original trailer and the Don LaFontaine Award for best voice over.
In 28 Years Later, written by Academy Award-nominated writer Alex Garland, 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.
The original 28 Days Later (2002) takes place in a world where animal rights activists have freed a group of infected chimpanzees to horrifying results. Murphy’s bicycle courier wakes up from a coma in a deserted London hospital 28 days later to find that the world has been overrun with zombies.
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The 28 horror franchise pics originally was released respectively by Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic labels at the former 20th Century Fox, the two films combined to gross nearly $150M at the global box office. Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris starred in 28 Days Later, while Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner and Robert Carlyle starred in the 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later.
Murphy returns to star in 28 Years Later and also is an EP. Producers are Andrew Macdonald, former Searchlight Pictures chief Peter Rice, Bernard Bellow, Boyle and Garland. The pic also stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes. The budget for the new movies are in the range of $75 million.
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