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Evening Standard5 hours ago

28 Years Later plot and ending explained — and will there be another film?
28 Years Later plot and ending explained — will there be another film?

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28 Years Later director Danny Boyle breaks down Covid parallels in new sequel
28 Years Later director Danny Boyle breaks down Covid parallels in new sequel

Daily Mirror

time23 minutes ago

  • Daily Mirror

28 Years Later director Danny Boyle breaks down Covid parallels in new sequel

Much-claimed director Danny Boyle has described landmarks 'being transformed' in front of our eyes during the 2020 Covid pandemic - as he reflects on the parallels to 28 Years Later lead character The film 28 Years Later explores a fictional infected mainland - and director Danny Boyle has said that the strange Covid times we lived through five years ago has helped viewers relate to the lead character Jamie. Set in a post-apocalyptic city, 28 Years Later tells the story of a highly contagious virus and its detrimental effects on the population, which leads to societal collapse. The film shows Jamie taking his 12-year-old son across a causeway to the abandoned and infected mainland. ‌ Now, Danny Boyle has spoken about the parallels to the Covid era in a Reddit Q & A, about how a city can be 'transformed overnight' yet 'still be recognisable'. During the pandemic many of us saw our towns and cities take on a new identity for a while and strange sights were spotted on high streets and of in our local supermarkets. ‌ Mr Boyle said: "What Covid did, it happened everywhere in the world, suddenly a city can be transformed overnight and still be recognisable. Suddenly it didn't just belong to movies. Who would have thought that recognisable landmarks can be transformed in front of your eyes. 'That's a wonderful opportunity for filmmakers to build on, and we duly did. That's a connection to something everyone's experienced. Over a longer period of time, after the urgency to stay safe (mask wearing, disinfecting everything, distrusting who you were meeting, was anyone sneezing in the room), you can't keep that up for very long. 'You start to explore risk. As humans, you just do. How far can I go? That increases over time. When you apply that mentality over 28 years, the amount of risks you'll take is huge. Jamie, our lead character, takes his 12-year-old son across a causeway to an infected mainland. 28 days after an outbreak he'd be a madman. But 28 years later he's a hero for bringing his son out - it reflects all our shared mentalities." Help us improve our content by completing the survey below. We'd love to hear from you! 28 Years Later writer, Alex Garland, finally confirmed that recent political events influenced the making of the third instalment. While fans of the franchise initially suspected that the global Coronavirus pandemic may have served as a massive inspiration for 28 Years Later, Alex— who directed Ex Machina and Civil War — denied any links between the upcoming zombie horror film and the global lockdowns. Instead, the Academy Award-nominee was reportedly inspired by Brexit, and claims much of 28 Years Later has been inspired by Britain's decision to leave the EU back in 2016. Speaking to Empire about the script and its influences, Alex said: "Covid was not on my mind because it was too recent and too present, but Brexit was." He noted a "sense of the globe just sort of shifting its position" and "not really looking in this direction," all of which served as inspiration for the treatment of the movie.

Director Danny Boyle admits Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm
Director Danny Boyle admits Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm

Daily Mail​

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mail​

Director Danny Boyle admits Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm

Director Danny Boyle has admitted that Slumdog Millionaire 'would never be made today' unless Indian filmmakers were at the helm. The producer, 68, reflected on the 2008 movie which he directed as he said him and the team in Mumbai who shot the scenes were 'outsiders'. The film was a loose adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author Vikas Swarup and followed the story of teenager Jamal (Dev Patel) from the slums of Mumbai. He becomes a contestant on the show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati?' and when interrogated under suspicion of cheating, he revisits his past, revealing how he had all the answers. Danny told The Guardian: 'Yeah, we wouldn't be able to make that now. And that's how it should be. 'It's time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we've left on the world.' 'We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We'd work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture. But you're still an outsider. It's still a flawed method. 'I'm proud of the film, but you wouldn't even contemplate doing something like that today. It wouldn't even get financed. Even if I was involved, I'd be looking for a young Indian film-maker to shoot it.' The moviemaker has recently stepped back into the director's chair to helm the new horror 28 Years Later - written by Alex Garland - 23 years after the pair's first film 28 Days Later hit cinemas. He recently admitted it was a 'nightmare' filming naked zombies for new horror movie. Danny has revealed they needed to take extra care not to have 'naked' actors on the set because they had strict rules in place to protect the film's child star Alfie Williams. Speaking to PEOPLE, Danny explained: 'I mean, if you're recently infected [with the zombie virus], you'd have some clothes, but if you've been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave. 'We never knew that [about rules governing nudity on set when there's a child present] going in, it was a nightmare.' Danny went on to explain the work-around they came up with, adding: 'Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you're not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked, so they look naked, but it's all prosthetics ... 'So it's like: 'Oh my God,' so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals'.' Danny revealed he was keen to push boundaries with the elements of nudity and gore in the film and he's glad studio bosses were supportive of his plans. He told Variety: 'I think one of the wonderful things about horror is that you're expected to maximize the impact of your story. Everybody wants to do that with a drama, with the romance, whatever. 'But with horror, it's obviously gonna be brutal, some of it. What we loved was setting it against an innocence that's represented by the various children in it, and also the landscape, the beauty of the landscape, the nature. 'Having those two forces stretches your story as far as you can go, if you maximize them. That was our principle and the studio was supportive of that, of course they were.' On Thursday critics weighed in on the new zombie horror movie. A follow-up to the 'great' 2002 film 28 Days Later, Boyle and Garland assembled a star-studded cast including Harry Potter star Ralph Fiennes, 62, and fellow Brit Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 35, for their latest endeavor. Two decades on from the original which saw a deadly virus plague London, the new movie finds a group of survivors living on the secluded island of Lindisfarne. Boyle and Garland's new project has received a heap of positive reviews from critics following early screenings. Rotten Tomatoes for instance have handed the movie an impressive 94 percent critic approval rating after rounding up the thoughts of more than 91 film reviewers. The Daily Mail's Brian Viner was incredibly impressed after watching the series' latest gory installment, dubbing the movie the 'best post-apocalyptic horror-thriller film I have ever watched'. Brian wrote: 'With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic survivalist horror-thriller film I have ever seen. Which sounds like limited praise, yet it's a much more crowded field than you might think.' Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also handed 28 Years Later a rave review, with the critic scoring the 'terrifying' horror movie five stars out of five. 'Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour - very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 - to undercut the ambient dread,' Collin wrote. 'And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree_ serve as regularly nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle ty with the notion of a 21st century British national myth.' The film too received five stars from The Times critic Ed Potton, who hailed Jodie Comer's 'impressive as always' performance. The journalist wrote: 'Is this the most beautiful zombie film of them all? It's hard to think of another that combines such wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending, brain-munching and vicious disembowelment.' The BBC 's Caryn James gave the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes's performance 'scene-stealing'. '28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world building, part sentimental family story and - most effectively - part Heart of Darkness in its journey towards a madman in the woods,' she wrote. 'It glows with Boyle's visual flair, Garland's ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught sole'. Empire also awarded 28 Years Later four stars out of five, with journalist Ben Travis writing: '28 Years Later is ferocious, fizzing with adrenaline. The mainland thrums with a pervasive sense of immediate danger; when the infected arrive (and, do they arrive), it is breathlessly tense.' Reviews in The Guardian and The Independent were slightly more critical however, with journalists scoring 28 Years Later with three stars. Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian: 'A little awkwardly, the film has to get us on to the mainland for some badass action sequences with real shooting weaponry - and then we have the two 'alpha' cameos that it would be unsporting to reveal, but which cause the film to shunt between deep sadness and a bizarre, implausible (though certainly startling) graphic-novel strangeness.' While The Independent 's Clarisse Loughley wrote: 'Even if 28 Years Later feels like being repeatedly bonked on the head by the metaphor hammer, Boyle's still a largely compelling filmmaker, and the film separates itself from the first instalment by offering something distinctly more sentimental and mythic than before.' 28 Years Later has become the best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025, with the film expected to gross around $30million in its first weekend. 28 YEARS LATER - THE REVIEWS The Daily Mail (FIVE STARS) Rating: With the terrifying and electrifying 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have delivered the best post-apocalyptic horror-thrill I have ever seen. The Times (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer is impressive as always in the latest instalment of the post-apocalyptic series The Telegraph (FIVE STARS) Rating: This transfixingly nasty zombie horror sequel, starring Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, is Danny Boyle's best film in 15 years The Evening Standard (FIVE STARS) Rating: Jodie Comer, young Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes have a monsters' ball in this supercharged third outing for the 28 Days Later series BBC Culture (FOUR STARS) Rating: Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have reunited for a follow-up to their 2002 classic. It has visual flair, terrifying adversaries and scene-stealing performance from Ralph Fiennes. Empire (FOUR STARS) Rating: The sequel we needed is both the film you expect, and the one you don't. There's blood, but also real guts and brain and heart - visceral cinema soaked in viscera. The Guardian (THREE STARS) Rating: This tonally uncertain revival mixes folk horror and little-England satire as an island lad seeks help for his sick mum on the undead-infested mainland. The Independent (THREE STARS)

What to Know About ‘28 Years Later'
What to Know About ‘28 Years Later'

New York Times

timean hour ago

  • New York Times

What to Know About ‘28 Years Later'

This article contains minor spoilers for '28 Years Later.' Excitement has been building for Danny Boyle's '28 Years Later,' in theaters June 20. Sure, the trailer, which uses a 1915 reading of a Rudyard Kipling poem to striking effect, is uncommonly exciting. And it's been a while since we've seen actually scary zombies on a big screen. But for many viewers, the anticipation is further compounded by the history behind '28 Years Later.' The release is a new chapter in a franchise that began in 2003 with Boyle's '28 Days Later,' now widely credited as creating a zombie revival, so to speak. Shot on a relatively tight budget, that film imagined a Britain taken over by ferocious, flesh-eating hordes. Some of the building blocks are familiar by now: Survivors band into small, often mismatched groups; scavenging expeditions loot empty stores; everybody runs from relentless pursuers of the fast-moving variety at one point or another. But '28 Days Later' still feels radical, thanks to Boyle's inspired direction. The movie interspersed quickly edited close-ups of violence into much longer moody, melancholy scenes whose haunting power has not faded, and was often driven by the superb soundtrack. Tellingly, the composer John Murphy's spooky instrumental 'In the House — In a Heartbeat' has been reused (including in a Louis Vuitton ad) and recycled (including by Murphy himself in 'Kick-Ass') many times since. Now Boyle has reunited with the '28 Days Later' screenwriter, Alex Garland, for what Garland has described as a trilogy. (The two men were executive producers on a first sequel, '28 Weeks Later,' that was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and released in 2007.) In a video interview, Garland said that while '28 Years Later' is a stand-alone film, a second has also been made, directed by Nia DaCosta. He explained that these two installments are narratively connected and were shot back to back. (DaCosta's '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' is expected in January.) As for the third feature, Garland said, 'the story is written. The script is not written.' Now that we are back in the '28' world, here's what to know about the premise, the new film's universe and what you might expect. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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