Danny Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland made their mark on a dying horror genre that lacked direction and inspiration 20 years ago with the release of 28 Days Later. Quickly garnering critical acclaim and a cult following among audiences, 28 Weeks Later, a sequel to the first film, was produced 5 years later, with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo replacing Danny Boyle as the director. Despite receiving positive reviews from both audiences and critics, the sequel didn’t perform as well as the original, a fact that seemed to put the brakes on any plans for a third installment. Back in June 2007, the producing company Fox Atomic asserted that they would consider making a third installment if DVD sales performed well. Later the same year, in July, Danny Boyle hinted that there was an idea for how the story would progress if a sequel was given the green light, saying: “There is an idea for the next one, something which would move the story on. I’ve got to think about it, whether it’s right or not.” However, Alex Garland’s comments three years later illuminated why a sequel was highly unlikely, stating that: “I’ll answer that completely honestly. When we made 28 Days Later, the rights were frozen between a group of people who are no longer talking to each other. And so, the film is never going to happen unless those people start talking to each other again. There is no script as far as I’m aware.” With all signs indicating that 28 Months Later was not going to happen, 2015 saw all this change after Garland remarked in an interview with IGN: “We’ve just started talking about it seriously. We’ve got an idea. Danny [Boyle] and [producer] Andrew [Macdonald] and I have been having quite serious conversations about it so it is a possibility. It’s complicated. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why it’s complicated, which are boring so I won’t go into, but there’s a possibility,” and then added that: “It’s more likely to be 28 Months than 28 Years. 28 months gives you one more place to go.” The cherry on top has come from Boyle’s recent interview with NME magazine this year, where he established that Alex Garland has already written a script for 28 Months Later, saying: “I’d be very tempted [to direct it]. It feels like a very good time actually. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about it until you just said it, and I remembered ‘Bang, this script!’ which is again set in England, very much about England. Anyway, we’ll see … who knows?” Danny Boyle and Alex Garland could not pick a better time than now to reward their loyal fans with the much-anticipated sequel, when reboots and sequels are all the rage. With the right approach, this could be the film that surpasses all the rest at the box office.
