Some cliche somewhere said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ This has proven to be the case for me and especially when it comes to fan art. I have always sought out great fan art and have wanted to share it with as many people as possible. “Awesome Art We’ve Found Around The Net” is the outlet for that passion. In this column, I will showcase the kick-ass artwork of some great artists, with the hopes that these artists get the attention they deserve. That’s the aim. If you have any questions or comments, or even suggestions of art or other great artists, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.
Fans of 28 Days Later and its follow-up 28 Weeks Later have been waiting seventeen years for another entry in the franchise, hoping we’d someday see a movie called 28 Months Later. We’re not getting that one, but 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland are currently working on reviving the franchise, and they’re going to make this revival worth the wait. Not only are we getting a new movie called 28 Years Later, we’re actually getting a whole trilogy of sequels! Compiled below is everything we know about this 28 Years Later sequel trilogy.
LONG IN THE WORKS
Way back in 2009, we heard that Paul Andrew Williams (The Cottage) was on board to direct 28 Months Later… but that project didn’t make it into production. Since then, we’ve heard Boyle and Garland mention 28 Months Later every once in a while. They would say there was a great idea for the sequel, then later say it might never happen. In a 2022 interview, Boyle said Garland had already written the script, and it might finally be the time to make it into a movie. In the middle of 2023, the collaborators confirmed to Inverse that they were having serious talks about the sequel, which they were calling 28 Years Later. Garland said, “A few years ago an idea materialized in my head for what would be really 28 Years Later. Danny always liked the idea.“ Boyle added, “So we’re talking about it quite seriously, quite diligently. If he doesn’t want to direct it himself I’ll be well up for it if we can execute a similarly good idea.“
28 Weeks Later wasn’t as successful as its predecessor, making $65.8 million on a budget of $15 million vs. 28 Days Later‘s $84.6 million on a budget of $8 million. That’s part of the reason why another sequel hasn’t happened sooner – along with the fact that Garland wasn’t overly pleased with 28 Weeks Later, which he didn’t write. Garland told Inverse, “I resisted [making a sequel] for a long time because there were things about 28 Weeks that bugged me. I just thought, ‘F*ck that. I’d rather try to write a different story in a different world.’“ Now he’s ready to write not just one but three new stories in the 28 Days Later world.
DIRECTORS
Alex Garland is expected to write the scripts for all three of the 28 Years Later movies, but apparently didn’t want to direct them. Danny Boyle will only be directing the first one. For the second film, possibly titled 28 Years Later Part 2, he’ll be passing the helm over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta. Production on DaCosta’s sequel will begin immediately after Boyle wraps filming on his. They wanted to have the sequel director signed on before filming on the first movie begins, as they want to “make sure each director is on the same page in regard to the story while also having time to bring their own vision to life.”
CILLIAN MURPHY
In 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy played bicycle courier Jim, who wakes up from a coma to find himself in an apocalyptic England that’s overrun by people who have been infected by a rage virus. Boyle and Garland went through several endings for the film before landing on the one movie-goers saw in theatres – and that ending was the only one where Jim survived. So he’s still out there, ready to live through another rage virus nightmare 28 years later. If Boyle and Garland decide to put him in the story.
While doing the press rounds for Oppenheimer last year, Murphy told Collider, “I was talking to Danny Boyle recently, and I said, ‘Danny, we shot the movie at the end of 2000.’ So I think we’re definitely approaching the 28 Years Later. But like I’ve always said, I’m up for it. I’d love to do it. If Alex [Garland] thinks there’s a script in it and Danny wants to do it, I’d love to do it.“ Despite the fact that Murphy is willing to reprise the role of Jim and is on board 28 Years Later as an executive producer, we still haven’t heard confirmation that he’ll actually be in the movie. While talking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast a couple months ago, Murphy said (with thanks to Coming Soon for the transcription), “It’s for (Danny Boyle and Alex Garland) to speak about, I suppose, but I think it’s been brewing for a while. The first movie was so important for me, as an actor. I love working with those guys. Alex has an idea. And Danny directing is just huge. Watch this space.”
CAST
While we wait to hear for sure if Cillian Murphy is or isn’t in the movie, other casting rumors have been floating around. According to industry scooper Daniel Richtman, Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) are in talks to play the lead roles. Details on the characters they might be playing are, of course, being kept under wraps.
DISTRIBUTION
There was a bidding war over the distribution rights to the 28 Years Later trilogy, with Warner Bros. and Sony emerging as the final competitors – and Sony taking the win in the end. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Each movie will have a budget in the $60 million range but it’s unclear how goalposts or compensation may have changed during the high-stakes negotiations. A theatrical release was of great import to the filmmakers.” Sony had an edge in this race due to the fact that it’s headed up by Tom Rothman, who used to be at Fox and worked with Boyle on eight different movies there. Release dates have not yet been announced.
Boyle and Garland are producing 28 Years Later with Bernie Bellew, original producer Andrew Macdonald, and Peter Rice, who was the head of Fox Searchlight Pictures when that company backed 28 Days Later. As mentioned, Murphy is executive producing.
And that’s everything we know about the 28 Years Later trilogy at this point. Are you looking forward to these films? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Of course we’ve got more Final Fantasy 7 Rebirht tips and tricks for you this week—it’s a big ass game, and there’s a lot to get through. If you’re confused about its menus or just need a little bit of help to reach Party Level 10, we have got you covered. We’ve also figured out where the hell Dragon’s Dogma 2’s clock…
Of course we’ve got more Final Fantasy 7 Rebirht tips and tricks for you this week—it’s a big ass game, and there’s a lot to get through. If you’re confused about its menus or just need a little bit of help to reach Party Level 10, we have got you covered. We’ve also figured out where the hell Dragon’s Dogma 2’s clock…
It’s hard to imagine iconic duos with their other half. What’s Abbott without Costello? Mac without cheese? Hall without Oates? Well, John Oates is looking to show you just what that might be, announcing a new album titled “Reunion” – quite ironic considering there will never be another one between him and Daryl Hall, the pop duo behind “Private Eyes” and “Maneater”, with Oates now saying the only person he’s going to reunite with is himself.
As John Oates told Rolling Stone, “I’ve been trying to rediscover who I am as an individual, both personally and on the professional and creative side. I realized there was a deeper and more nuanced meaning to ‘reunion.’” This rediscovery comes not long after news broke that Daryl Hall was seeking to sue John Oates over the latter attempting to sell his share in their collaborations, putting a nail in a rather storied partnership and career.
While the album isn’t due out until next month, it seems like some of the songs can be interpreted as John Oates, now 76, tackling the drama head on. One of the tracks, “Dance Hall Girls”, is a cover that John Oates came upon more than 50 years ago before Hall & Oates joined. And while the discovery came prior to forming one of the biggest pop acts of their time, there is definitely a link to what he has gone through lately. “I thought, ‘My trip’s over, I’ve got to go home.’ Daryl and I hadn’t been working together at that point. We were friends and we hung out, whatever, but something told me it was time to go home. That record has stuck with me forever, since 1971.”
Removing one half of a team can be rather jarring, something John Oates himself went through on a recent season of The Masked Singer. “I thought, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen if people maybe don’t recognize my voice due to the fact that Daryl’s voice is such a signature of the Hall & Oates big hits?” While Oates does seem quite confident about the new album and tour, fans may wonder if he might have some uneasiness about whether or not people will turn up if he’s without his former buddy.
As sad as it may be for those that grew up with Hall & Oates, the latter half confirmed late last year that he is ready to move on.
Do you think Oates can maintain a fanbase in a post-Hall & Oates world? What is your favorite song of theirs?
As we predicted earlier this week, Alex Garland’s speculative war flick, Civil War, is well on its way to becoming A24’s biggest opening ever. According to Deadline’s box office numbers, the film grossed $10 million on Thursday and Friday, with it now expected to make about $23 million. That’s a solid number for a hardcore, R-rated adult movie, but the studio behind it, A24, really has a knack for making their films an event for serious filmgoers. In fact, it’s one of the only studios I know of that has a legit following, with Deadline making the interesting point that A24 is like the HBO of movie companies. There’s a certain quality level you can always be sure of, and indeed, we gave Civil War a rave.
Otherwise, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is once again defying industry expectations, with it outpacing their estimates, on its way to a $13-15 million weekend. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire should take third place, making $4.6 million, with it within a hair of passing the $100 million mark. Fourth place will go to Dev Patel’s well-reviewed Monkey Man, which is falling about 56% to a $4.5 million weekend. Last weekend’s bomb, The First Omen, isn’t likely to make fifth place, with it being outgrossed by Kung Fu Panda 4, which is likely going to make about $4.4 million. Given that there’s only an estimated $200k difference between the third, fourth and fifth positions at the box office, the order could easily change by tomorrow. I would expect The First Omen to make a pretty swift debut on Hulu, where this solid horror flick might pick up a following after seemingly being overlooked by horror audiences. Hopefully, Abigail will have better luck next week.
What have you gone to see this weekend? Let us know in the comments.
Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, has died at the age of 87. She is best known for Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary which chronicled the making of Apocalypse Now, the iconic 1979 movie which was plagued with a myriad of issues.
Eleanor first met her future husband on the set of Dementia 13, which was Francis’ feature directorial debut. Eleanor was the assistant art director on the movie and the pair soon began dating before getting married in 1963. Each of their children, Gian-Carlo, Roman, and Sofia, would get into the movie business after spending their childhood years growing up on film sets, although Gian-Carlo sadly died in 1986 at the age of 22.
“I don’t know what the family has given except I hope they’ve set an example of a family encouraging each other in their creative process whatever it may be,” Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017. “It happens in our family that everyone chose to sort of follow in the family business. We weren’t asking them to or expecting them to, but they did. At one point Sofia said, ‘The nut does not fall far from the tree.’“
Eleanor documented the making of Apocalypse Now, capturing events such as Martin Sheen’s nervous breakdown and the aftermath of the destruction of an expensive set, which nearly led to the entire project being abandoned. “I was just trying to keep myself occupied with something to do because we were out there for so long,” Eleanor said in 1991. “They wanted five minutes for a TV promotional or something and I thought sooner of later I could get five minutes of film and then it went on to 15 minutes. I just kept shooting but I had no idea … the evolution of myself that I saw with my camera,” continued Eleanor, who ended up shooting 60 hours worth of footage. “So, it was a surprise for both of us and a life changing experience.“
Joining forces with co-directors Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, Eleanor transformed Hearts of Darkness into one of the best filmmaking documentaries ever made. She went on to helm several documentaries about the making of other films made by family members, including Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. At the age of 80, she made the leap to narrative features with Paris Can Wait, a comedy starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin, which Eleanor wrote and directed. She followed that up with Love Is Love Is Love in 2020.
Our thoughts go out to the entire Coppola family during this difficult time. Safe journey, Eleanor.
Ryan Gosling singing “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie at the Oscars was a definite highlight of the ceremony, but the actor originally turned down the Academy when he was first asked to perform it.
While speaking with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Gosling revealed that he initially wasn’t down to perform the hit song at the Academy Awards. “One hundred percent no,” Gosling said. “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.“
When Gosling finally agreed to do it, he was able to bring his daughters to the rehearsals. “It was their interest in Barbie and their disinterest in Ken that sort of started all of this,” Gosling said. “It’s really been a team effort, and they were on the film and they came to set when I filmed the number, but a lot of this has no context for them. It’s just like a lot of fake tan stains around the house. So I wanted them to come to the dress rehearsal just to give it some kind of context for what had been going on.” He said that his daughters actually helped him get the choreography down. “They know all the choreography than I do, and the songs,” he said. “Oh my god. They’re backstage kind of showing me the moves.“
Ryan Gosling was also up for the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Ken, but lost to Robert Downey Jr. Given the enormous success of Barbie, it’s only natural that the studio would want a sequel, but Gosling’s co-star Margot Robbie remains skeptical. “Its funny, that knee-jerk reaction in this day and age for everyone to immediately ask about a sequel,” Robbie said earlier this year. “I don’t think it was like that 20 years ago. This wasn’t designed to be a trilogy.” Not all movies need sequels, but the chance of another billion-dollar payday will be hard for the studio to resist.
Gosling will next be seen in The Fall Guy, which our own Chris Bumbray absolutely loved. “The Fall Guy really is a terrific summer action movie and a throwback to a different (better) time in genre movie-making,” Bumbray wrote. “More than anything, it’s a tribute to the stunt industry and a demand that it gets the recognition it deserves, with the point made over and over that CGI action is lame and can’t hold a candle to the old ways. I’m inclined to agree.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here. The Fall Guy will hit theaters on May 3rd.
Once upon a time, Sam Raimi was set to direct Spider-Man 4 with Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst both returning to star. However, the project wasn’t coming together quickly enough for Sony’s liking and the studio elected to reboot the entire franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man. Thanks to Maguire reprising the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, there’s been an interest in returning to the original franchise, but could Spider-Man 4 actually happen?
While speaking with IndieWire, Kirsten Dunst was asked if she would even want to do Spider-Man 4, which left the actress wondering whether we really needed the sequel. “It would depend. I don’t know,” Dunst said. “Honestly, do we need it?“
Dunst continued: “I don’t think we need that. I don’t know. It was so long ago. I just don’t know how they would, what the story would be. I don’t know. It seems like … I don’t know! It would really depend on the script, and also, I don’t know, you’re really putting yourself out there in a way that … let’s maybe leave things when they were good. You know what I mean?“
Sam Raimi has expressed an interest in returning for Spider-Man 4 when the time is right but downplayed the rumors earlier this month. “I did read that [rumor], but I’m not actually working on it yet,” Raimi explained. “Marvel and Columbia are so successful with current Spider-Man [movies], and the track there, and I don’t know that they’re going to go back to me, and say, ‘Well, folks, we can also tell that story!’” As fun as it might be to see the original cast return for Spider-Man 4, I feel like I agree with Kirsten Dunst at this point; is it really needed when we have so many other successful Spider-Man projects?
Kirsten Dunst can currently be seen starring in Alex Garland’s Civil War. Our own Chris Bumbray loved the movie, but is curious how general audiences will react to the potentially controversial movie. “It asks us to take a long, hard look at what’s happening around us and demands that we look beyond politics and recognize what we have in common rather than what we don’t,” Bumbray wrote. “It’s a plea for peace in that, like other movies of this nature, notably the apocalyptic drama The Day After, it dares to show us hell in the hope of keeping it from ever happening.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.
Possibility Space, a studio founded by State of Decay creator Jeff Strain, has shut down, according to several socialmediaposts from its former employees.
