{"id":243853,"date":"2026-01-17T23:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/243853\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T23:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:30:07","slug":"cillian-murphys-28-years-later-the-bone-temple-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/243853\/","title":{"rendered":"Cillian Murphy’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Return"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s no spoiler that Cillian Murphy<\/a> makes his return to the hit zombie franchise that made his name more than two decades on in \u201c28 Years Later<\/a>: The Bone Temple.\u201d Danny Boyle, who gave the actor his big screen break in \u201c28 Days Later,\u201d revealed the info after the actor notably failed to show up in last year\u2019s sequel \u201c28 Years Later\u201d (it turned out that, no, he wasn\u2019t the emaciated zombie seen rising from a field).<\/p>\n

\n\tBut those who don\u2019t want to know how and when he appears in Nia DaCosta<\/a>\u2018s blood-soaked sequel to the sequel \u2014 in cinemas with Sony Pictures \u2014\u00a0may want to stop reading now. <\/p>\n

\n\tMurphy does indeed return in \u201cThe Bone Temple,\u201d reprising his role as Jim, the bicycle courier who famously woke up from a coma to find a London deserted and devastated by the Rage virus back in 2001. But it\u2019s not until right at the very end of the new film \u2014\u00a0and in a distinctly quiet scene that calms the tone down dramatically from the wildly unhinged mayhem seen over the previous 90 minutes. For director Nia DaCosta, working from Alex Garland\u2019s script, that was entirely the point of what she hoped to achieve. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause it\u2019s not a big \u2018return of the superhero\u2019 franchise moment,\u201d she explains to Variety. \u201cIt\u2019s the return of the bike messenger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter reaching the climax of a prolonged and escalating period of madness with Ralph Fiennes\u2019 Dr Kelson, Jack O\u2019Connell\u2019s Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and Chi Lewis-Parry\u2019s Alpha zombie Samson, the film makes a sudden shift to a whole new setting, showing Murphy\u2019s Jim living in relative isolated safety, quite possibly in the same remote cottage he was left at the end of \u201c28 Days Later.\u201d A quarter century on and he now has a daughter (who he\u2019s seen helping prepare for a history exam). <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe fact that Alex wrote him teaching his daughter history and\u00a0that\u2019s how he wanted to introduce him back into the story, I was like, ok, so that\u2019s how we shoot it,\u201d DaCosta says. \u201cSo it\u2019s grounded. It\u2019s not this big, bombastic moment. And I think it\u2019s powerful enough just to see him.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIt was certainly powerful enough to have audiences erupt into cheers in early screenings. <\/p>\n

\n\tAs it happens, audiences may have recognized Murphy\u2019s voice much earlier. As DaCosta was figuring out the title sequence of \u201cThe Bone Temple\u201d and how to introduce the name of the new film on screen, she decided that what she needed to do was deploy a scene from the past. \u201cSo we did it with sound, and the sound you hear is Cillian\u2019s from the first film saying \u2018Hello\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cSo he actually appears in the film very early on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFans of the franchise may also note a hat tip to it\u2019s origins in the big reveal with Murphy later on, with DaCosta using the original eerie track \u201cIn a Heartbeat,\u201d composed by John Murphy for \u201c28 Days Later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was the biggest franchise-y thing we did,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\n\tMuch like the final scene in \u201c28 Years Later\u201d that introduced O\u2019Conell\u2019s Crystal, the last act in \u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple<\/a>\u201d with Murphy heavily suggests that there\u2019s more to come. Thankfully, Sony has already greenlit a follow-up, with Garland back on writing duties.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaCosta claims it was \u201cso much fun\u201d making the film (and also admits it was \u201c100%\u201d a reaction to having made a major MCU tentpole in \u201cThe Marvels\u201d and then an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen\u2019s \u201cHedda\u201d). But sadly it\u2019s largely irrelevant whether or not she\u2019d want to come back to direct the next one. <\/p>\n

\n\tAs she notes: \u201cDanny called dibs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s no spoiler that Cillian Murphy makes his return to the hit zombie franchise that made his name…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4298,4299,398,146,85,46,397,5879],"class_list":{"0":"post-243853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-28-years-later","9":"tag-28-years-later-the-bone-temple","10":"tag-cillian-murphy","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-nia-dacosta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}