How 28 Years Later links to the previous films
Director Danny Boyle has reunited with screenwriter Alex Garland for zombie threequel 28 Years Later, a film that is set to kick start a whole new trilogy.
Set 28 years after the original zombie outbreak, as seen in Boyle's 28 Days Later, the long-awaited film will see a young boy setting out to find a doctor to help his dying mother.
28 Years Later will stagger into cinemas on 20 June, with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes leading the cast. The first of two planned sequels, dubbed The Bone Temple, will follow in January 2026.
Ahead of its release, here's everything we know about Boyle's return to the undead franchise.
Written by Garland and directed by Boyle, the original movie, 28 Days Later, was released back in 2002. It helped shoot its star Murphy into the big leagues, and popularised the trope of the 'fast zombie' after years of shuffling, slow-moving undead.
The success of Boyle's original film — complete with its stark and down-to-earth dystopian tone — proved so successful that it gave the whole zombie genre a new lease of life, bringing it back from the dead once more. This resulted in more undead adventures on both the big and small screen, perhaps most notably with AMC bringing us their never-ending mega-hit The Walking Dead.
A surprisingly stellar sequel titled 28 Weeks Later arrived in 2007 but Murphy didn't return and Boyle was only present as a producer. Instead, Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo took the helm with Boyle's Trainspotting star Robert Carlyle in the leading role.
All things considered, it was a decent horror sequel but ever since its release, fans have been clamouring for a direct follow-up from the original creatives behind 28 Days Later.
Cut to 2025 and their patience has finally paid off, with Boyle and Garland once again revisiting a zombie-ravaged Britain for another rage-fuelled outing.
Originally, the follow-up was set to be titled 28 Months Later, continuing with the movie's timeline-set title motif. However, after so much time had passed since we last returned to this world in 2007, Boyle, Garland and Murphy thought that the title 28 Years Later would be more appropriate.
As its title suggests, 28 Years Later will pick up almost three decades on from the original zombie outbreak. The threequel will follow a group of survivors living on a small island 'in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine', according to its synopsis.
It adds: '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.'
Boyle's original film brought us to a world where anti-animal abuse protestors accidentally release a new virus onto the world whilst trying to liberate some lab animals. This highly contagious and fast-spreading virus sends anyone it infects into a blind, murderous rage and it doesn't take long for it to spread across the UK, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
One of the few people oblivious to this destruction is Murphy's character Jim, who awakes from months spent in a coma to discover a very different world, one divided into two factions — survivors and the infected.
28 Weeks Later caught up with society when it had finally got a hold of the situation and managed to enforce some sort of return to normality. However, soon enough, rabid hoards of the undead were in control once more.
The fast-paced trailer for 28 Years Later reveals how the creative brains behind this troubling story have upped the ante on their flesh-eating world. Aaron Taylor-Johnson can be seen firing arrows at zombies, while Jodie Comer braces herself against what appears to be a raging fire.
Watch the video below to whet your appetite for more terror:
Nosferatu star Aaron Taylor-Johnson will lead the 28 Years Later cast as survivor Jamie, with Jodie Comer playing his pregnant wife, Isla. Newcomer Alfie Williams will portray their 12-year-old son, Spike.
Conclave actor Ralph Fiennes will play a doctor, while Sinners' Jack O'Connell will play cult leader Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal.
Oppenheimer star Murphy will not return as Jim, the bike courier-turned-zombie-survivor that he played in Boyle's first film. However, he will serve as executive producer on the new film, and has been tipped to return in a later sequel.
Yes. Ralph Fiennes told IndieWire that the first two movies have already completed filming. The second instalment of the new trilogy, The Bone Temple, is due to be released in January 2026, with Candyman and The Marvels filmmaker Nia DaCosta behind the camera.
Speaking during the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2024, producer Andrew MacDonald said: 'We're making, hopefully, three more 28 films with the first one called 28 Years Later that Alex has written, and Danny has directed, and has finished shooting,
'Then we're just about to start, tomorrow morning, actually, part two. And then we hope there's going to be a third part and it's a trilogy."
28 Years Later will be released in UK cinemas on 20 June
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