The zombie film 28 Days Later came out way back in 2002, and fans have never been quite able to let it go. These aren't the slow, ambling zombies we're used to from stuff like The Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead; the zombies in 28 Days Later were fast, angry and focused. We got a sequel movie called 28 Weeks Later in 2007, but it didn't involve the original creative team. Now, over two decades after the original, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland are back in the driver's seat for 28 Years Later, which picks up after the zombie apocalypse has properly devastated society, as zombie apocalypses tend to do.
Sony dropped the officially trailer for 28 Years Later earlier today, and it is properly scary, particularly when it's underscored by an unsettling reading of Rudyard Kipling’s 1903 poem “Boots.” We characters played by the likes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Ralph Fiennes living in a walled city. There's also a pile of skulls a shot of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and possibly a cameo from a familiar face around the 1:48 mark. Watch below:
At that time stamp, we see what looks like actor Cillian Murphy pop up as a skin-and-bones zombie. Murphy, who won an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Oppenheimer, played the hero of the original 28 Days Later, a bicycle courier named Jim. He was alive by the end of that movie, but if that really is him in the trailer, obviously things went south after that.
A Sony executive has said that Murphy would pop up in 28 Years Later "in a surprising way and in a way that grows." Bringing him back as a zombie would definitely qualify as "surprising," although if this was supposed to be a surprise, I don't like that they gave the game away in the trailer.
We'll get all the details when 28 Years Later hits theaters on June 20, 2025.
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