The eagerly anticipated 28 Days Later sequel, 28 Years Later, just its first plot details — and a major update — from one of its stars. Speaking with IndieWire, Ralph Fiennes revealed that the film, which is one of three follow ups to 28 Days Later, has already been shot as has the second in the trilogy. More than that, Fiennes revealed that 28 Years Later will center around a boy looking for a doctor to help his dying mother, nearly three decades after the initial plague from the first film.
“It’s three films, of which two have been shot,” Fiennes said. “Britain is 28 years into this terrible plague of infected people who are violent, rabid humans with a few pockets of uninfected communities. And it centers on a young boy who wants to find a doctor to help his dying mother. He leads his mother through this beautiful northern English terrain. But of course, around them hiding in forests and hills and woods are the infected. But he finds a doctor who is a man we might think is going to be weird and odd, but actually is a force for good.”
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This latest update comes just a couple of months after producer Andrew Macdonald had confirmed that the first film in the new set of films, 28 Years Later, was already shot and that part two was about to begin production back in August. At that time, Macdonald said he was hopeful that there would be a third part for the trilogy and while Fiennes’ comments don’t shed any additional light on the progress for a third film, that the first two are complete certainly bodes well.
In addition to Fiennes, 28 Years Later will star Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The film is a sequel to 2002’s 28 Days Later which followed bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy), who woke up from a coma only to find that the accidental release of a highly contagious and aggression-inducing virus had caused society to totally break down. The film got a sequel in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later with that film finding two young siblings breaking protocol to find a photograph of their mother and, in the process, reintroducing the Rage Virus to London’s safe zone. That film starred Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, and Idris Elba.
What Do The New 28 Years Later Details Tell Us?
The new plot details about 28 Years Later give us quite a bit of information about what the world has been like in the decades since the events of 28 Weeks Later. If there are just a few pockets of uninfected communities in Britain, it appears that they were unable to contain the Rage Virus or even potentially create much in the way of safe zones. This also suggests that the world at large may now also be decimated by the infection. The end of 28 Weeks Later ended with a group of infected emerging at the Paris Metro, a moment that revealed the virus had made its way to continental Europe. It is just the next step in logic to assume that from there the infection continued to spread — especially since one of the characters in the film was an asymptomatic carrier of the Rage Virus, suggesting a source for the virus in continental Europe.
28 Years Later is currently scheduled to open in theaters on June 30, 2025.
