28 Years Later: Everything We Know, Trailer, Release Date

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28 Years Later is coming later this year to scare you senseless. There is a lot to know about Danny Boyle’s zombie-filled sequel, including story details, the release date, and the full cast list.

The zombies have mutated, new human enclaves have sprouted up, and the UK is almost a complete no-go area. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jodie Comer play a couple who, upon venturing beyond the safety of their settlement with their young son, discover the true extent of the undead horror spreading across the country.

“It was a wholly different approach,” Boyle tells Empire. “It was about what that 28 years gives you.” And what it gives you is the start of what will hopefully be a full trilogy. Director Nia DaCosta has already shot 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, with the third film pending box office success of the first two. Here’s how 28 Years Later sets all that up.

28 Years Later Story

The plot centers on the self-sufficient community of Lindisfarne on Holy Island, which is situated just off the UK mainland. Jamie (Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Comer) live here in relative safety with their 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams).

Together, to open his eyes to what’s become of the UK in the nearly three decades since the outbreak, they take Spike on a rite-of-passage trip beyond the boundaries of Holy Island. It’s where the trouble starts.

“It’s a closed and necessarily very tight community,” says Boyle. “There are very strict defense laws, obviously, to survive that long in what is effectively an ongoing hostile environment. They’ve created a successful community, as they see it.”

Is 28 Years Later a Sequel?

28 Years Later is a sequel to 28 Days Later, which was released in 2002. Set in London following a pandemic that turns humans into hyper-aggressive cannibals, it popularised the modern zombie archetype. These infected sprint rather than shamble.

The 2007 year saw the release of 28 Weeks Later, which took place in a heavily quarantined London slowly getting back to its feet. The progress is undone; however, when two kids’ excursion into an infected zone sets events in motion, the zombie plague spread throughout the community.

28 Years Later Cast

It’s a whole new cast for the third film in the series, featuring no crossover or continuation with the previous two films. Ralph Fiennes, who plays Dr. Kelson, recently described the plot to Deadline.

“It’s 28 years later from the first one with Cillian [Murphy], and the idea is that the infected have taken over the UK and who has survived, who hasn’t, how do people survive, and there’s a community that’s not infected, and that community is the starting off point of the story. People in that community go off into the danger zone, and will they survive or not.”

Even that brief synopsis from Fiennes was enough to get him a slap on the wrist from Sony. “I’m not allowed to say anything,” he said. “It’s a big secret. I’ve been given all these guidelines about what I should or shouldn’t say…I did say something about a technical aspect, and I got a missive saying, ‘You can’t say this.’ … It wasn’t angry, it was a very polite but respectful saying, ‘Could you please not mention such and such’?”

Who is in 28 Years Later?

• Jodie Comer as Isla
• Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie
• Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Kelson
• Jack O’Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal
• Alfie Williams as Spike
• Edvin Ryding as Erik Sundqvist
• Erin Kellyman
• Chi Lewis-Parry

What is the 28 Years Later Release Date?

28 Years Later released in cinemas on 20 June 2025. It reunites Boyle, Garland, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, all of whom worked on 28 Days Later. That film’s star, Cillian Murphy, serves as an executive producer. It was shot back-to-back with its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is expected in 2026.