‘28 Days Later’ Creators Still Discussing a Possible ‘28 Months Later’ Sequel

According to my calculations, it’s been 146 months since the initial U.K. release of ‘28 Days Later,’ Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s rightfully acclaimed zombie movie about the aftermath of a terrible virus unleashed in the middle of London. The film is credited with helping revitalize the zombie genre (and popularizing zombies who run like the dickens at their victims instead of the classic George Romero shufflers), and it inspired a 2007 sequel, ‘28 Weeks Later.’ There was talk of another sequel, a ‘28 Months Later,’ set a little over two years after the zombie outbreak, but so far, the project hasn’t gotten off the ground (and we’re now about 120 months past the titular date).

But Garland, who’s got a new sci-fi movie called ‘Ex Machina’ coming out in a couple weeks, says the project is not dead yet; more existing in a strange limbo state between life and death, sort of like a zombie. Speaking with IGN, Garland offered an update on the sequel:

We’ve just started talking about it seriously ... We’ve got an idea. Danny [Boyle] and [producer] Andrew [Macdonald] and I have been having quite serious conversations about it so it is a possibility. It’s complicated. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why it’s complicated, which are boring so I won’t go into, but there’s a possibility.

Garland said that if the sequel happens, it’ll likely be ‘28 Months Later,’ even though they’ve missed that deadline by nearly a decade. But he did concede ‘28 Years Later’ is also a possibility. (“‘28 Decades,’ he quipped, “is probably taking the piss.”)

It will be interesting to see how this project is received if it does indeed come to fruition. ‘28 Days Later’ was a real watershed zombie movie; it had a huge impact on popular culture. ‘28 Weeks Later,’ directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, came and went without much impact (though it had some supporters who praised its ultra-bleak tone) and since then the world of zombies has been swamped by new entries from Romero and, of course, the ‘Walking Dead’ television series. What seemed fresh 28 (or 146) months ago might now feel a little stale. But, hey, zombies love stale. They are literally stale. So maybe it works.