28 Days Later is often credited with helping revive the zombie movie genre for a new generation. Directed by Danny Boyle, the horror movie ditched the idea that zombies are undead ghouls and reimagined them as living beings infected with a rabies-like virus that transforms them into rage-filled monsters.
This reinvention allowed Boyle to play with audiences’ expectations of what a zombie was capable of and made the thriller movie exceptionally scary. Unsurprisingly, 28 Days Later was a monster hit both critically and commercially, and a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, was eventually released in 2007.
While the sequel’s not as good as its predecessor, it’s still an enjoyable romp and 20th Century Fox began talking about a hypothetical third film in the horror series nicknamed 28 Months Later, but nothing came of these plans. Over the next decade, various people attached to the production would come out and say they were still “thinking” about it, but the monster movie seemed dead in the water.
The thing about zombies is they never stay dead, and in 2019 Boyle told The Independent that he and writer Alex Garland (the genius behind the science fiction movie Ex Machina) had started working on the third film. “Alex Garland and I have a wonderful idea for the third part,” he said. “It’s properly good.”
It appears that work on the script is done, as Boyle recently told the NME the script is written. Apparently, it was finished years ago, and it’s a “lovely” idea. Even more exciting is that Boyle would be tempted to direct it.
“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?
“It might come back into focus because one of the things that’s happening in the business at the moment is it has to be a big reason for you to go to the cinema because there are less and less reasons,” he continues. “It’s hard for companies distributing films and for cinema chains to show films. They’re struggling to get people into the cinema unless it’s something like Top Gun: Maverick or a Marvel. But a third part would get people in, if it was half-decent.”
If you love 28 Days Later, check out our guide to the best ghost movies, or if you want to know more about the legends of the slasher genre, we have guides to Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger.