Danny Boyle Says The Chances Of 28 Months Later Are 40/60

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Danny BoyleFirst director Danny Boyle showed us what the world would look like 28 days after an outbreak of quickly running zombies. Then we jumped forward in time to 28 weeks after the outbreak. In the future, it’s possible Boyle could continue this trend and drop 28 Months Later in our laps.

In a recent interview with Wired—hyping his hypnosis thriller Trance—Boyle says the chances of his returning to the helm of his franchise are about 40/60. Not great odds, by any means, but we’ve all encountered worse. People still play the lottery every week, after all.

He says, “[I]t’s very difficult to know whether zombies are overexposed now as a concept. So it’s 40/60 whether it happens or not. But we did have an idea of where to set it and what it might be about.”

Considering that zombies are currently being used to shill multiple major automobiles, candy, and every other product under the sun, they market may be a little bit oversaturated. And that isn’t even taking into account AMC’s The Walking Dead, one of the highest rated dramas on cable.

28 Days Later is such a revisionist take on the genre, one of the first “fast zombie” movies, that you wonder about Boyle’s motivations.

I don’t like zombie movies. I never did. We took a genre and fucked with it. Zombie aficionados, they’re quite precious with all their rules. Like with running: ‘They don’t do that!’ Of course there are so many manifestations of zombies now, the rule book has gone out the window. I saw one episode of The Walking Dead, and it was very gripping. But the zombies were stumbling around again, which I hate.

So he doesn’t like zombie movies, but he’s largely responsible for the modern state of the genre.

We’ll see if Boyle returns to his earlier world or not. Until then we have more than enough major zombie action to tide us over. Brad Pitt’s World War Z looms on the horizon, and Warm Bodies is quickly fading in the rearview. Then there are more low-budget undead flicks than you can shake your proverbial stick at, and zombies on TV every Sunday.