Cillian Murphy will not be in '28 Years Later' but could appear in the sequels

Sony Pictures has a trilogy underway that will expand the universe of 28 Days Later y 28 Weeks Later.

The first of them, 28 Years Laterfeatures the return of Danny Boyle y Alex Garlanddirector and screenwriter of the original, respectively, resuming their work.

In addition to the return of Boyle and Garland, Tim Rothman – president of Sony Motion Pictures Group – said that Cillian Murphy returned “but in a surprising and growing way.”

After these statements by Rothman, we all believed that Murphy was reprising his role as Jim, the protagonist of the original 2002 installment, whose plot follows Jim, after waking up from a coma following a bicycle accident, to discover that England is now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers.

Well, Murphy is NOT back as Jim in 28 Years Lateralthough according to the producer Andrew Macdonaldit is not ruled out that he is involved in the sequels (via Empire Magazine):

“We wanted him to be involved in this and he wanted to be involved. He's not in the first movie, but I hope there's something from Jim at some point. He is involved right now as an executive producer, and I hope we can work with him in some way in the future in the trilogy.”

This means that Murphy could return as Jim in the sequel to 28 Years Laterwhich was recently announced as the official title 28 Years Later: The Bone Templewith premiere set in theaters for January 16, 2026six months after the launch of its predecessor, 28 Years Lateror in the third installment, of which at the moment it is only confirmed that it will be directed by Boyle.

Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) is the director of The Bone Temple. Garland is the screenwriter of all three films.

We understand that DaCosta has already filmed the sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. It is said that the filming of the first two installments of the trilogy was done consecutively.