WARNING: This article contains spoilers for 28 Years Later.
Ever since we first witnessed the bonkers ending of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later, an audacious return to the world they first introduced in zombie-adjacent horror classic 28 Days Later, we have been ravenous for any clue as to what its follow-up might have in store. Handily then, this morning has just seen the surprise drop of the first trailer for Candyman director Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, an Alex Garland penned and Danny Boyle produced sequel that’s set to take us further into the franchise’s effed-up world of monsters, men, and, well, monsters of men. For your first glimpse at the return of Spike (Alfie Williams), Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), and Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) — and our introduction proper to the Jimmies — check out the trailer below;
Just when we thought we’d recovered from that chilling recital of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Boots’ from the 28 Years Later trailer, along comes the sound of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1964 appearance on BBC’s Horizon. “Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation,” intones the sci-fi author over shots of the titular skeletal monument and a harrowing match-cut from a bustling train to its reclaimed shell, “in fact, it may not even exist at all.” And that, in a nutshell, seems to be the reckoning that lays at the heart of this sequel. As the trailer shows, DaCosta’s follow-up to Boyle’s last film looks set to plunge our young hero Spike, seemingly ‘saved’ by O’Connell’s Jimmy and his gang at the end of the last movie, into a fresh hell of man’s own making here as we learn more about the Jimmies — in particular a prominently featured, wig-wearing Erin Kellyman — and their warped worldview.
The official synopsis for The Bone Temple sheds some more light on the sequel: “Expanding upon the world created by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland in 28 Years Later — but turning that world on its head — Nia DaCosta directs 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. In a continuation of the epic story, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) finds himself in a shocking new relationship — with consequences that could change the world as they know it — and Spike’s (Alfie Williams) encounter with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) becomes a nightmare he can’t escape. In the world of The Bone Temple, the infected are no longer the greatest threat to survival – the inhumanity of the survivors can be stranger and more terrifying.”
We’ll find out exactly what the future has in store for us this time when Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hits cinemas on 16 January, 2026, which is — we shit you not — 28 weeks after the release of 28 Years Later. Genius!