Ralph Fiennes reveals the plot of 28 Years Later

Cast member Ralph Fiennes has shared details about the plot of 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle’s long-awaited follow-up to 28 Days Later

28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have finally reunited to make a sequel to their zombie (or, if you prefer, infected people) movie classic. As we reporter earlier this year, this sequel is set up at Sony, is going to be called 28 Years Later – and it’s meant to launch a whole trilogy of 28 Days Later sequels. Filming on the first installment in this trilogy wrapped last back in August… and while plot details have been kept under wraps up to this point, cast member Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) has just spilled the beans!

When 28 Years Later came up during an interview with IndieWire, Fiennes decided to go ahead and tell us all about it: “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.“

In addition to Fiennes, the cast of 28 Years Later includes Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (The Fall Guy), and Erin Kellyman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). It has also been said that 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy returns “in a surprising way.”

In the original film, Murphy played bicycle courier Jim, who wakes up from a coma to find himself in an apocalyptic England that’s overrun by people who have been infected by a rage virus. Boyle and Garland went through several endings for 28 Days Later before landing on the one movie-goers saw in theatres – and that ending was the only one where Jim survived. So he’s still out there, ready to live through another rage virus nightmare 28 years later. As The Hollywood Reporter previously noted, “The 2002 film grossed $82.7 million globally and spawned a sequel, 2007’s 28 Weeks Later, though Boyle and Garland were only nominally involved as executive producers.”

Garland is wrote the screenplay for the sequel that will come after 28 Years Later. Of the two 28 Years Later projects currently in the works, Boyle is only planning to direct the first one. For the second film, he has passed the helm over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta. We heard that work on the DaCosta-directed follow-up started by the end of August, and according to Fiennes, that one has wrapped production as well. He told IndieWire, “It’s three films, of which two have been shot.“

Thanks to their deal with Sony, each of these new films will be receiving a theatrical release and will have budgets in the $60 million range. 28 Years Later has a budget of $75 million.

Boyle and Garland are producing 28 Years Later with Bernie Bellew, original producer Andrew Macdonald, and Peter Rice, who was the head of Fox Searchlight Pictures when that company backed 28 Days Later. Murphy is executive producing. The film is scheduled to reach theatres on June 20th, 2025.

What do you think of what Ralph Fiennes has revealed about the plot of 28 Years Later? Let us know by leaving a comment below.