Believe it or not, it's already been 12 years since Fox Atomic released 28 Weeks Later, the follow-up to Danny Boyle's insanely successful 28 Days Later, and while Boyle didn't return for the sequel, he is involved in the long-awaited third film! Years ago, Boyle even said he'd be interested in returning to the director's chair.
Planned to be called 28 Months/Years Later, the project has been gestating for quite some time. Now, Boyle is generating some buzz in a new interview with The Independent, where he revealed that he’s still working on the third entry with Alex Garland (Annihilation, Ex Machina), who wrote the 2002 original film.
"Alex Garland and I have a wonderful idea for the third part," he told the site. "It’s properly good."
He continued: "The original film led to a bit of a resurgence in the zombie drama and it doesn’t reference any of that. It doesn’t feel stale at all. He’s concentrating on directing his own work at the moment, so it’s stood in abeyance really, but it’s a you-never-know."
Back in 2015, Garland told IGN that they had "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."
He added: "It’s more likely to be 28 Months [Later] than 28 Years. 28 Years gives you one more place to go. 28 Decades is probably taking the piss."
Being that it's been four years since we last heard talk of the project, Boyle could've easily just said the film's never going to happen, but insists that him and Garland have been developing a great idea. I think the most important takeaway from all of this is that Boyle seems determined to wrap up the trilogy eventually. We'll be waiting!