Director Danny Boyle has revealed that his 2007 sci-fi thriller Sunshine, written by Alex Garland, could have been a trilogy had it been a hit.
This month sees the UK release of 28 Years Later, a belated follow-up to director Danny Boyle’s hit indie horror, 28 Days Later from 2002. The new film is a further collaboration between Boyle and writer-filmmaker Alex Garland; the pair previously worked together on The Beach and Sunshine before Garland went on to become a director in his own right with the likes of Ex Machina, Civil War and more besides.
History could have been rather different, however, had 2007’s Sunshine been a bigger hit in cinemas. Released in 2007, it was a big, ambitious sci-fi thriller in which an ensemble cast – including future Oscar winners Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh – flew off on a space mission to revive the ailing Sun.
In a new interview with Collider, Boyle revealed that Sunshine was originally conceived by Garland as a three-part saga. While the director was protective over specific details (“Alex might use it again,” he said), he described the early plans as a “planetary trilogy.”
“Originally, when we were doing it, Alex wrote two other parts,” Boyle said. “It was supposed to be a trilogy.”
Boyle then implied that the sequels would have dealt with other worlds once the Sun had been fixed in the first movie: “It was a planetary trilogy. It was to do with the sun itself, with two other stories… it was interplanetary stuff…”
Those plans never got beyond the outline stage, not least because Sunshine unfortunately failed to make its $40m budget back in cinemas.
Boyle and Garland have a new, separate trilogy planned out now, though: 28 Years Later will be followed in 2026 by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta. Boyle will then return after that, if all goes to plan, with a third (and so far untitled) and final entry.
Interestingly, 28 Years Later will ignore the events of the 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Although Boyle says that Fresnadillo did “a fantastic job” on that film, this year’s sequel won’t follow its story, which saw the Rage virus flood into Europe.
“There’s nothing wrong with 28 Weeks Later,” Boyle said. “We just decided not to follow those story elements. And it’s a bold choice we decided to declare up front by saying the Rage Virus was driven back from mainland Europe.”
28 Years Later arrives in UK cinemas on the 20th June.
