28 Years Later ends with the introduction of Jack O'Connell's Jimmy Crystal, a cult leader who looks set to bring Alfie Williams' Spike under his wing. We meet Jimmy as a boy in the movie's opening scene, and the implication seems to be that he'll be a key figure in this new trilogy.
Candyman director Nia DaCosta helmed the already-shot middle chapter, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Talking to Variety about 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy's role in the series, filmmaker Danny Boyle confirmed that Jimmy will be a key figure in DaCosta's follow-up.
"He’s an executive producer on this and was enormously supportive. He appears briefly in Nia’s film," the director confirmed. "I don’t think that’s giving too much away, and our plan is that he will be an enormous character in the third film in the way that Jack O’Connell’s character — who you see briefly at the end of the first film — is an enormous character with Ralph Fiennes in the next film."
Asked what inspired Jimmy, writer Alex Garland told the trade, "What he is from is the same thing that the entire film is from in a way, which is this film — and in a way the whole trilogy, if we ever get to make it as a trilogy — is in part about how we look in a regressive way to the past."
"Very simply, Danny and I grew up in an era where everything was about looking forward in some respects, and currently, for the last 10 or 15 years, we’re in an era that is very much about looking back. What the film is preoccupied with on some level is the way when we look back, there is amnesia, and there is cherry picking. Also, there are things that are misremembered."
"What the film is, if you look at individual characters, but you also look at the community that’s represented and the elements about the communication and the world-building is a mash of those things: Things that have been forgotten, things that have been cherry-picked and things have been misremembered. They’re smushed so together, which carries within it a kind of commentary," he concluded.
It sounds like Jimmy might be a warped version of what he remembers of the past before the Rage Virus ravaged the UK. That promises to make him a fascinating character, and one DaCosta clearly has big plans for in her sequel (more Ralph Fiennes also isn't a bad thing).
Beyond that, Garland is less certain about the yet-to-be-confirmed third instalment. "The script isn’t written," he confirmed. "It’s strange: There’s a story, there’s a plan, there’s a structure. These three films are in some ways distinct from each other, in other ways interrelated, because there are characters that have a through line throughout all of them, although they are also essentially separate stories."
"I think that, having written the first one, in many ways I didn’t know at that point what the film would be, because there’s a whole set of discoveries left to uncover. The same is also true with the second film," Garland explained. "So I had to understand something about what Ralph Fiennes is going to create with Danny, to be able to lean to that. So short answer: I’ve got the idea, I’ve got the plan, but there’s not a script."
While it's hard to imagine Sony Pictures not moving forward with Boyle and Garland's threequel, it happening likely hinges on the box office success of both 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
However, the former is one of the studio's best-reviewed titles in some time, with 92%. That and the promise of Murphy playing a lead role in the threequel are bound to go in its favour.
In 28 Years Later, it's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway.
When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.
28 Years Later arrives in theaters on June 20, 2025.