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. This sequel is set up at Sony, it’s called 28 Years Later – and it’s meant to launch a whole trilogy of 28 Days Later sequels. In fact, when producer Andrew Macdonald confirmed that filming on 28 Years Later had wrapped back in August, he followed that up by saying that they were about to start working on the second chapter in this trilogy. Boyle only planned to direct the first one; for the second film, he passed the helm over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta. Last week, cast member Ralph Fiennes said that the first two movies in the trilogy have been shot, and now the industry scoopers at Film Updates have been able to confirm that the second movie, which is apparently going by the title 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple, has also wrapped production.
Garland wrote the screenplays for 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple, and is expected to write the last entry in the trilogy as well. While we don’t have any information on what happens in The Bone Temple, Fiennes revealed some details on 28 Years Later: “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.“
In addition to Fiennes, the cast of 28 Years Later includes Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (The Fall Guy), and Erin Kellyman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). It has also been said that 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy returns “in a surprising way.”
In the original film, Murphy 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. 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.”
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 Andrew Macdonald, and Peter Rice, who was the head of Fox Searchlight Pictures when that company backed 28 Days Later. Murphy is executive producing. The film is scheduled to reach theatres on June 20th, 2025. A release date for 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple has not yet been announced.
Are you glad to hear that two of the three films in this new trilogy have already wrapped production? What do you think of the title 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple? Let us know by leaving a comment below.