Nia DaCosta’s follow-up to Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later – The Bone Temple – will arrive just seven months later, it’s been confirmed.
When the trailer dropped last week for Danny Boyle’s upcoming horror sequel, 28 Years Later, it caused quite a stir, amassing a huge amount of views in a very short space of time. In a kind of grotesque magic eye experiment, it also sparked a viral movement that had half of the world squinting to see if they’d spotted Cillian Murphy’s character returning as a zombie. (Spoiler: they hadn’t.)
Anticipation for this film – which has been shot on iPhones – is clearly very high with the belated return of a beloved British-set horror series clearly having hit the mark with audiences so far. As you likely know, 28 Years Later will end the original 28 trilogy while also kicking off a set of three new films when it releases in June of next year.
The follow-up film – titled 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – will be directed by Candyman's Nia DaCosta and has now been dated by Sony Pictures, per Variety. January 16th 2026 is the date the film will arrive, meaning we have around seven months in between films.
This also means that the film will arrive in the same month as Zach Cregger’s Weapons and the M3GAN sequel, SOULM8TE so it could well be a horror month for the ages, despite not even being in October.
We also know that regular 28 scribe, Alex Garland has written the script for this one and that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Cillian Murphy will appear. We don’t know much about The Bone Temple but we do have a synopsis for 28 Years Later which you can read here:
‘The film takes place almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory. One group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. 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.’
As far as we know, the planned third film doesn’t yet have a director. Could Garland step into that role? We hope so but who knows. What we do know is that we’re terribly excited and we’ll be bringing you more news as we hear it.
