The trilogy-closing 28 Years Later seems like it’s slipping away a teeny bit, as Danny Boyle suggests it’ll happen, but he doesn’t know when. There’s an increasing suspicion that the final part of the 28 Years Later trilogy, launched to some fanfare last year, is decreasingly likely to happen. The first two films – 28 ... 28 Years Later 3 | Danny Boyle sounds a little less certain
The trilogy-closing 28 Years Later seems like it’s slipping away a teeny bit, as Danny Boyle suggests it’ll happen, but he doesn’t know when.
There’s an increasing suspicion that the final part of the 28 Years Later trilogy, launched to some fanfare last year, is decreasingly likely to happen.
The first two films – 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – were effectively made back to back, both from scripts by Alex Garland. Danny Boyle directed the former, Nia DaCosta directed the latter, and the idea was that Boyle would return to shoot the trilogy closer.
Since then, he’s been distracted with the movie Ink, but the thinking was he’d turn his attention back to 28 Years Later 3 once he was done with that.
The problem though is that the box office returns for the pair of 28 Years movies thus far has been underwhelming, and Sony Pictures is rumoured to be less than enthused at the idea of injecting further funds for the final movie.
This is reflected too in the changing tone of Danny Boyle’s own comments on the film. Just a few weeks ago he was sounding relatively upbeat about things, but fresh comments at the Zurich Film Festival – where he’s been promoting Ink – feel like a small tonal shift.
“28 Years 3, or whatever it ends up being called, will get made because people keep asking about it”, he said. “Quite when I’m not sure, but there’s a script, a very good script by Alex Garland.”
It’s the “I’m not sure” bit of that statement that feels a little bit new, and while it’s easy to read too much into a line or two given at a film festival, maybe there’s an implicit note in there that if we want the third movie, we need to bang the drum for a little.
What does seem clear is that the idea of shooting it over the next few months is very unlikely to happen.
More as we hear it. But by the sounds of it, it might be a while until more emerges.
