Cillian Murphy Wasn’t Aware 28 Days Later Was a Zombie Movie

Many horror fans credit Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later with helping revive the zombie subgenre when it was released in 2002, as it offered a more grounded and compelling take on the dormant formula, but star Cillian Murphy recently recalled how he didn’t feel like he was making an entry in the beloved realm and that he was merely making a movie about infection. In fact, the actor admitted that, had he watched any of the seminal zombie movies from filmmaker George A. Romero, he might have had a different reaction to the possibility of contributing to that landscape.

“I wasn’t too aware we were making a zombie movie, to be honest with you,” Murphy recently shared during a SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Conversations, per Variety. “It was right around the time SARS happened and there was all this ‘air rage’ stuff going on. So I never felt it was a zombie film. And I’m glad I didn’t watch the Romero movies because I didn’t realize how hallowed those movies were.”

Prior to 28 Days Later, Romero delivered audiences Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, and while there were other beloved zombie films out there, this trilogy was considered by many to be the gold standard of what a filmmaker could accomplish in the zombie realm. With slasher films dominating the ’80s and ’90s, zombie movies had largely been forgotten, until director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland collaborated on 28 Days Later. 

“Before 28 Days Later, there weren’t that many zombie movies — it was kind of a dead genre,” Murphy expressed. “So Danny and Alex rebooted it.”

While Boyle and Garland can’t take full credit for the revival, their film was a significant component in a zombie resurrection. After their film hit U.S. theaters in 2003, a remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead from director Zack Snyder and the horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead from director Edgar Wright both landed in theaters in 2004 and were both hits. Also kicking off in 2003 was a black-and-white zombie story in the pages of a comic book, marking the debut issue of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. 

The 2000s saw a resurgence of zombies stories, but it was the premiere of the TV adaptation of The Walking Dead that took the ghouls to new levels of fame, arguably making them more popular than ever over the past decade.

Murphy is set to produce the long-awaited sequel 28 Years Later, with Boyle and Garland also both returning.

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