It has been 20 years since Danny Boyle’s infected chased Cillian Murphy across a desolate London landscape and into the English countryside with 28 Days Later, and now the two have been speaking positively about how they’d like to revisit that bleakest of world’s for an oft-rumoured sequel.
During an interview with the NME in which they looked back on their ground-breaking 2002 original, which made a star of Murphy and grossed $72 million at the worldwide box-office, it was revealed that Alex Garland has already penned a script for 28 Months Later, and that the two were keen to return to the franchise.
Murphy, who credits the film with putting him on the radar of Christopher Nolan, a relationship that will bear more fruit with 2023’s Oppenheimer, says that “every time I do bump into Danny or Alex I always mention it. Because I showed it to my kids recently, some Halloween about four or five years ago, and they loved it. It really stands up, which is amazing for a film that’s 20 years old. So yeah, I love the idea and it’s very appealing to me.”
The goods news is that it sounds as though Danny Boyle is just as keen on the idea, claiming that Garland has come up with “a lovely idea” for his completed 28 Months Later script, adding “I’d be very tempted [to direct it]. It feels like a very good time actually. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about it until you just said it, and I remembered ‘Bang, this script!’ which is again set in England, very much about England. Anyway, we’ll see… who knows?”
Of course, we already had a 2007 sequel with the really-rather-good Robert Carlyle starring 28 Weeks Later, which teased the spread of the infection to mainland Europe, but wasn’t as lucrative as Boyle’s original, and so the fast-running franchise came to a standstill.
Let us know whether you think 28 Months Later will ever happen, or if you think that’s how long we’ll have to wait before hearing another update about it by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Originally published November 3, 2022. Updated November 4, 2022.
