It’s been 21 years since the Rage Virus wreaked havoc on the world in 28 Days Later.

Thankfully, fans won’t have to wait much longer to see how much of humanity has survived when the infection returns on June 20, 2025, in the upcoming film 28 Years Later.

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland teamed up to create the original 2003 zombie apocalypse film starring then-unknown actor Cillian Murphy. Though they only acted as producers on the 2007 standalone sequel 28 Weeks Later (directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who co-wrote the script with Rowan Joffé, Enrique López Lavigne and Jesus Olmo), The Hollywood Reporter confirmed in January 2024 that Boyle and Garland would be returning for the third installment.

But 28 Years Later isn’t just a follow-up to 28 Days Later, it’s also the start of an entirely new trilogy.

“We’re making, hopefully, three more 28 films with the first one called 28 Years Later,” producer Andrew Macdonald said during the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2024, per THR. “Then we’re just about to start, tomorrow morning, actually, part two. And then we hope there’s going to be a third part and it’s a trilogy.”

After years of wondering what happened to the original survivors, the news of a third installment left fans with more questions than answers. Here’s everything we know so far about 28 Years Later — and whether or not Murphy will reprise his role as Jim.

Set exactly 10,228 days after a rage-inducing virus escaped from a biological weapons factory and crumbled the foundations of modern society, 28 Years Later follows a group of survivors quarantined on a heavily guarded island in Britain. They, like other small factions around the globe, have managed to find a way to live amongst the infected.

But when one man ventures on a mission into the unprotected mainland, he “discovers secrets, wonders and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well,” per the film’s synopsis. As the ominous tagline suggests, “Time didn’t heal anything.”

One of the film’s stars, Ralph Fiennes, gave a bit more insight into the plot in an October 2024 interview with IndieWire. He said 28 Years Later sees a young boy searching for a doctor to help his dying mother.

“He leads his mother through this beautiful northern English terrain,” Fiennes said. “But of course, around them hiding in forests and hills and woods are the infected. But he finds a doctor who is a man we might think is going to be weird and odd, but actually is a force for good.”

Is Cillian Murphy in 28 Years Later?

The 2003 film starred Murphy as Jim, a bicycle carrier who wakes up from a coma after the outbreak begins. He wasn’t in 28 Weeks Later and though some fans believed he appears in the upcoming film’s trailer as a zombie, producer Andrew Macdonald told Empire that Murphy is not in 28 Years Later.

“[On] this, we wanted him to be involved and he wanted to be involved. He is not in the first film, but I’m hoping there will be some Jim somewhere along the line,” Macdonald said in January 2025.

According to Macdonald, Murphy is “involved at the moment as an executive producer,” and the producer hopes he “we can work with [Murphy] in some way in the future in the trilogy.”