It’s been over 20 years since director Danny Boyle and writer/director Alex Garland’s fast-zombie apocalypse movie, 28 Days Later, terrified viewers and now, in a recent interview with Inverse, the pair have revealed they’ve been talking about a sequel.
“A few years ago an idea materialized in my head for what would be really 28 Years Later,” Garland said to the publication, “Danny always liked the idea.”
Released back in 2002, 28 Days Later starred Cillian Murphy as a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover the accidental release of a highly contagious, aggression-inducing virus – known as Rage – has caused the breakdown of society.
The movie had a sequel a few years later with 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, which picked up the story six months after the original and depicts the efforts of NATO military forces attempting to establish a safe zone in London which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t go well.
Boyle and Garland had minimal input into the sequel, with it instead being directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intruders). Though it had an impressive cast (including Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner and Idris Elba) 28 Weeks Later wasn’t quite as successful as its predecessor, scoring a 66% Audience Score on Rotton Tomatoes compared to the 85% of 28 Days Later.
Garland says that it was the 28 Weeks Later sequel that initially put him off writing another movie in the horror series. “I resisted [making a sequel] for a long time because there were things about 28 Weeks that bugged me,” he admitted. “I just thought, ‘F*ck that. I’d rather try to write a different story in a different world.’”
So who would be directing the new movie? Danny or Alex? “We’re talking about it quite seriously, quite diligently,” Danny Boyle says. “If he doesn’t want to direct it himself I’ll be well up for it if we can execute a similarly good idea.”
Boyle has recently directed Pistol, a TV mini series based on the memoir of Steve Jones, the Sex Pistols guitarist. Meanwhile, Garland wrote and directed 2022’s creepy doppelganger horror Men and is currently working on action thriller Civil War, starring Kirsten Dunst.
We’ll keep you posted!
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