Danny Boyle Gives Update On Three Film Trilogy, Cillian Murphy NOT in"28 YEARS LATER" Plus More!

Director and writer, Danny Boyle, gives an update on what fans can expect with “28 YEARS LATER” and how the new story is just too massive to be packed into one film. This plus more details below!

There is no doubt that fans have been chomping at the bit for anything related to “28 YEARS LATER.” A few weeks ago, the first trailer for the film dropped online and many fans were pleased by what they saw. Now in a discussion with EMPIRE, director and writer, Danny Boyle talks about where “28 Years Later” as a franchise will go and how eager he is to get back into the world he created with co-writer Alex Garland in 2002 with “28 Days Later.”

Boyle details how for many years he and Garland were mulling over different ideas for a follow-up to “28 Days Later” (2007) but nothing really stood out until Garland came to Doyle with a fresh take that worked. “It was a wholly different approach,” Boyle tells Empire. “It was about what that 28 years gives you.”

Watch the “28 YEARS LATER” Trailer Below!

Other details regarding the main plot of the film were dropped as well, Empire notes that “28 Years Later” will details the lives of those stuck in the UK and how they managed to etch out a living while still dealing with the “rage” that decimated Britain years prior. This has us intrigued since a lot of time has passed and the whole infrastructure of Britain is in ruins still.

Boyle goes on to give a bit more details regarding the roles actors Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Alfie Williams will be and how they are in a community living on a small Island off the coast of England. “It’s a closed and necessarily very tight community,” says Boyle. “There are very strict defense laws, obviously, to survive that long in what is effectively an ongoing hostile environment. They’ve created a successful community, as they see it.”

Producer Andrew Macdonald told Empire about Cillian Murphy's return to the franchise as not only a producer but also for his role in the original film back in 2002.

“[On] this, we wanted him to be involved, and he wanted to be involved. He is not in the first film, but I’m hoping there will be some Jim somewhere along the line. He’s involved at the moment as an executive producer, and I would hope we can work with him in some way in the future in the trilogy.”

This tells us that Murphy will be involved but just not in the way fans want him to be. Hopefully, we will see his character, Jim, at least mentioned or used in a flashback in the trilogy, somewhere.

This is just what takes place in 28 YEARS LATER but that doesn’t stop the story from continuing as director Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the next film in the planned three-film trilogy and has reportedly already been shot and is now in post-production. We had wondered how the original team of Boyle and Garland would leap back into this post-apocalyptic nightmare and Garland has a pretty good answer via Empire: “This is very narratively ambitious. Danny and I understood that,” he explains. “We tried to condense it, but its natural form felt like a trilogy.”

Trilogy’s are tricky because you want a final ending in a trilogy usually but then again you will always have fans who want the series to continue. We have no idea if there will be more films after these three but can confirm the first two films will come out and then, based on the popularity and audience approval, the third and final film will be released, noted Empire.

Whatever comes from these three films, we know we’re going to get more blood, carnage, and a whole lot of running away from the “infected".

28 YEARS LATER hits theaters on June 20, 2025, from Sony and features  Jack O’Connell (Amy Winehouse: Back To Black), Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), ​Alfie Williams (“His Dark Materials”) and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).

We’ll keep you updated on 28 Days Later as we get more news.

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