One of the most surprising and exciting movie news this year is this author Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle go back to the world of 28 days later. Over two decades since the groundbreaking Original zombie film and 17 years after the sequel, the two are preparing for production 28 years later.
In conversation with Garland about his latest film: Civil Wario9 asked him why now is the right time to return to the franchise that started his career.
“Part of it had to do with the passage of time,” Garland told io9 in a video chat. “It sounds stupid, but you get locked up. I originally wrote 28 days later almost like a gag. A caption has been added to the title. You know, “12 Hours Later,” “The Next Day,” but make it the title. And then you get stuck with it. [Laughs] You have to live with it. And 28 months later would have seemed strange given the time that has passed. And, 28 weeks later, someone had already done it. And so our final time frame, unless we switch to centuries, was 28 years. And enough time had passed to justify this right.”
But of course there were a few other important factors beyond just timing. “Danny was interested in it, the producers were interested in it and I had an idea,” he said. “Before, I didn’t really have an idea that interested me. It was swimming. We would talk about it. It was discussed every five years or so, but I had no motivation to do it. I said, “Look, if someone else wants to do it, that’s fine, but I don’t have anything.” For some reason, this passage of time unlocked a certain concept in my mind, which then underlies the film, and so on it suddenly made sense. I said, “Okay, I think I have an idea.” And I scripted it and showed it to Danny and Andrew [Macdonald] and Peter [Rice] Who are the producers, and they said, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s do it.'”
Additionally, Garland confirmed that the overall idea is for the series to become a trilogy if audiences show up for it. “That was key to the idea because it was a story that couldn’t fit into one film,” Garland said. “And there was an opportunity – which we may not have the opportunity to do – but to do a proper trilogy. It is not a series of sequels that effectively repeat the first in slightly different forms, but an actually true story. And we don’t know if we will be able to do that because it ultimately depends on market forces. Films cost a lot of money. Even cheap films cost a lot of money. You know, people talk about low budget, but it’s always about a lot of money. And that really depends on whether people want to see future films after we make it.”
But either way, 28 years later by Alex Garland and Danny Boyle. And finally it will come… even almost 28 years after the original. There’s no release date set, but you have to guess 2025 or 2026, 23 or 24 years after the first film, that’s probably a good estimate.
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