With 28 Years Later having wrapped production, we look at what the sequel’s story might potentially look like.
NB: The following contains spoilers for 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, plus potential plot details for 28 Years Later.
Given just how influential and financially successful it was, it’s a little surprising that 2002’s 28 Days Later hasn’t spawned more sequels. Instead, the past 22 years have seen the release of just one follow-up: 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, a film even more dark and despairing than its predecessor.
Things are about to change, however, with the 2025 release of 28 Years Later. It’ll see director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland reunite for a belated sequel, which as its title suggests will take place almost three decades after the outbreak of the Rage virus that swept across the UK in the original film.
Nor is it the only sequel on the way; Candyman director Nia Da Costa is heading up another entry, currently titled 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple, with work on that said to be underway now filming has wrapped on Boyle’s movie. It’s said that we’ll eventually get a trilogy of new films, with the original film’s star Cillian Murphy returning in the latter two.
At present, little is known about the story Boyle and Garland will tell in 28 Years Later, though the two earlier films contain slivers of world-building that provide some potential clues. Using this, set photos and the handful of things the cast and filmmakers have already divulged in interviews, we can piece together at least a vague idea of what next June’s sequel might involve.
All the rage: 28 Days Later
In 28 Days Later, a virus called Rage is accidentally unleashed from a lab by animal rights activists. The disease, which turns its hosts into bloodthirsty, feral ghouls, spreads across the UK, and the film follows former bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy), chemist Selena (Naomie Harris) and a handful of other survivors as they cross the country in search of refuge.
Despite all the horror and bloodshed, 28 Days Later ends on a happy note of sorts, with a final shot implying that the pandemic has passed its peak – the remaining infected are shown lying on the ground, their skeletal forms suggesting they’ve run out of hosts to bite and pass the disease onto.
Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s sequel, meanwhile, undoes all this somewhat. While the disease has been successfully confined to British shores, and NATO forces have set up a fortified district on the Isle of Dogs to protect uninfected survivors, the Rage virus still lurks in the rest of the country. Worse, US medical officer Scarlet (Rose Byrne) discovers that the Rage virus has mutated to the point where a host can carry the disease without displaying any symptoms.
The infection soon spreads through the fortified district, and the US military desperately tries to prevent a wider outbreak by firebombing the entire area. Nevertheless, the virus continues to spread, with the film’s final shot revealing that an outbreak has begun in Paris.
Location, location, lo… argggh!
This might imply that 28 Years Later could take place outside the UK for the first time, but co-star Jodie Comer – who will appear alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell, and more besides – has already revealed that the sequel will be filmed in and around Newcastle. A quick look at IMDb reveals that 28 Years Later’s production has also filmed sequences in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, Lindisfarne and Kielder Forest.
Candid photos taken during the shoot have shown Comer filming a scene on a leafy hill in Rothbury, Northumberland; the scene being captured included a couple of sheep, which had been given an extra layer of wool in order to make them look more wild. Other images show a handful of infected ghouls charging through fields; makeup seems to have been applied to make them look filthy and stark naked.
The images all suggest that we’re in for a post-apocalyptic tale along the lines of The Last Of Us. Nature has reclaimed much of the land – as hinted at by an abandoned petrol station seemingly covered in moss – and survivors are still eking out an existence among the carnage. One photo shows actor Edvin Ryding dressed as a NATO soldier, complete with machine gun; another shows another young actor clutching a bow and arrow.
Whether the Rage virus has spread across the rest of the planet by the time of 28 Years Later’s events isn’t currently known, but the images we’ve seen so far suggest that the UK still hasn’t recovered – and that what’s left of its society may be in even worse shape than when we last saw it in 2007. Certainly, the presence of some aggressive-looking infected suggests that, far from dying out, as implied by the end of the first film, the Rage virus has become the new normal.
Night and day
The original film drew on John Wyndham’s classic post-apocalyptic novel The Day Of The Triffids to a degree, particularly the idea of a survivor missing a cataclysmic event because he’s in hospital and then waking up to find the world forever changed. The subtitle of Nia Da Costa’s upcoming sequel, The Bone Temple, is also intriguing. It’s pure speculation, but this writer can’t help wondering whether Garland and Boyle will draw a little from another seminal novel, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (the inspiration for the great grandparent of all zombie movies, George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead).
In I Am Legend, a pandemic turns the citizens of North America (and possibly the whole planet) into vampiric, blood-sucking monsters. Years after the virus took hold, however, the infected are no longer mere monsters, but have begun to organise themselves into a new kind of society. Might some of those infected by Rage have done something similar after almost three decades? The Bone Temple subtitle could suggest they’ve come up with their own warped religion.
In an April interview on CinemaBlend’s podcast, Garland said that 28 Years Later is “about the passage of time, and thinking about what effect the passage of time would have. Is it what you would traditionally call a post-apocalyptic state? Or has something else begun to manifest? Time is really at the core of the engine of the film.”
We can only guess at what that ‘something else’ might be. A hint of a post-Rage society of infected, perhaps? Again, it’s only speculation.
What we do know for sure is that, with the likes of Ex Machina, Annihilation and this year’s Civil War to his name, Alex Garland is one of the best British writer-directors currently working; Danny Boyle’s track record speaks for itself. The pair have talked for years about making a 28 Days Later sequel (for so long, in fact, that its original 28 Months Later title had to be changed), and Garland has recently said that he agreed to write the script because he’d hit on a worthwhile, 'specific idea’.
Whatever they’ve come up with, there’s every chance that 28 Years Later will be dark, bloody – and with any luck, be worth the long, long wait.
28 Years Later is due to come out in June 2025.
