The newly revealed start date of production now means that the whole trilogy could be in the can as the first movie scares into theaters.
It’s been a long road, but 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have finally reunited to make a sequel to their zombie movie classic. 28 Years Later has already found a wide audience with its haunting trailer and the movie is meant to launch a whole trilogy of 28 Days Later sequels. The theatrical release date is June 20… and it has been said that 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy returns for this film “in a surprising way.”
Garland also wrote the screenplay for the sequel that will come after 28 Years Later. For the second film, Boyle passes directing duties over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta – and that sequel, titled 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple, has already wrapped. Now, according to Production List, the start date for shooting 28 Years Later Part III is slated for March 31. While it was originally thought that production was to start after the first hits theaters, with this start date, barring any problems during principal photography, the whole trilogy could be wrapped before the first film in this new trilogy debuts with general audiences. Also, according to Empire, Boyle is likely to return to the helm the trilogy capper.
The cast of 28 Years Later also includes Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (The Fall Guy), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), and Erin Kellyman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). 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.
When 28 Years Later came up during an interview with IndieWire, Fiennes decided to go ahead and tell us all about it: “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.“
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.
