More than two decades ago, 28 Days Later helped bring the zombie genre back to life. The film starred Cillian Murphy as Jim, a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to discover that he is among the survivors of an incurable virus that has decimated the U.K.
Screenwriter Alex Garland knew director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald after the trio worked on the 2000 feature adaptation of Garland’s novel The Beach that starred Leonardo DiCaprio. Garland, who was a fan of George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead as a teen, was getting pizza with Macdonald when he first pitched a feature idea about running zombies in London. “There were five drafts where it was just me working with Andrew, and then eventually Andrew said, ‘OK, now I’m going to show this to Danny,’ ” Garland tells THR. The writer has said that fast-moving zombie dogs in the 1996 video game Resident Evil were a revelation: “That’s the thing that gave the idea of a zombie movie, but where the zombies move quickly.”
The attacks on Sept. 11 happened during the film’s London shoot, and Boyle recalls uncertainty over whether the English capital might be targeted as well. “That fed into our movie, without a doubt,” Boyle tells THR of the paranoia. Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston rounded out the cast for the film that Fox Searchlight released theatrically on June 27, 2003. It collected $74 million globally ($130 million today), and a THR story about its legacy noted that the project “uses the idea of these living dead to explore the collapse of society.”
Boyle and Garland only had producer credits on the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, but the June 20 Sony follow-up 28 Years Later sees the return of Boyle as director and Garland as writer. Its cast includes Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. Over the years, Boyle has attended anniversary screenings for 28 Days Later and informed Garland when they’re packed with fans. “I think it’s the idea and the manner with which we did it,” Boyle has said about the first movie’s appeal. “That led us to think, ‘Could we actually investigate this further?’ ”
This story appeared in the June 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
