Whilst promoting his directorial debut Ex Machina, Alex Garland has hinted that a third movie in the 28 Days/Weeks franchise is actively in development. Speaking to IGN Garland announced that there has been some movement of the long gestating sequel.
"We’ve just started talking about it seriously, we’ve got an idea. Danny and [producer] Andrew [Macdonald] and I have been having quite serious conversations about it so it is a possibility. It’s complicated. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why it’s complicated, which are boring so I won’t go into, but there’s a possibility…"
28 Days Later was directed Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, released back in 2002 the low budget project was a hit with audiences who had been waiting years for an intelligent zombie movie. Even though the Z-word was never uttered and these flesh eating fiends were the result of a man made rage virus being unwittingly released into the population. Five years later and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo took over directing duties for the sequel 28 Weeks Later, Boyle and Garland stayed on to executive produce the sequel and are expected to remain in those roles for the potential third movie.
As we’re on the subject of potential sequels, Alex Garland also wrote the screenplay for Dredd which despite a poor performance at the box office in 2012 has found a cult following and they want a sequel. Garland had something of an update, but brace yourself it’s not the good news we were all hoping for.
“My hope is, and I actually think this will happen – somebody else will do it. Not to be all coy and silly about it, but I think our film was better than the first one, right? Just to be blunt. And the job of the next people is to make their film better than ours. And then if they do that, then finally, maybe this character will break out in the way that it deserves to. But we’ll see.”
Garland also offered words of comfort to the thousands of fans who signed the petition to make Dredd 2 a reality.
“It makes me feel sad really. I feel grateful to the people who’ve attempted to get a sequel off the ground. And sorry that actually what happened was we let them down. Because the reality is that a film needs to acquit itself. It shouldn’t need a petition. And the truth is if it gets to the point where it needs a petition, it’s in big trouble anyway. That’s the cold hard reality of it. I feel a sense of residual guilt. It’s quite strong actually; it’s not that residual. Dredd was a very, very hard movie to work on, for all sorts of different reasons, and the reward would have been at the end of it that it all worked out. But it didn’t all work out. That’s the reality.”
Ex Machina is released in the UK on January 21 and arrives in the US on April 10.