28 Years Later Sequel Has “Much Bigger Part” for Ralph Fiennes

The eagerly anticipated 28 Years Later doesn’t even hit theaters until June, but we already know that at least one of the 28 Days Later follow-up’s characters will have a role beyond the upcoming film. Speaking with Empire, Ralph Fiennes and filmmaker Danny Boyle revealed that his character, Dr. Kelson, is significant to both movies but his role in the sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will be even larger. The aforementioned film, directed by Nia DaCosta, is set to arrive in 2026.

“He’s a survivor, and the way he survived is very interesting,” Fiennes said of his character. “He’s quite out-there in his views on the world. I think audiences will assume something about him and then see where it goes.”

“He strides forward into the second film in an enormous way, where the question of what he’s after and what he wants to do gets fully resolved,” Boyle said.

[RELATED: 28 Years Later: First Trailer Returns to Danny Boyle’s Terrifying Apocalypse]

Here’s what we know about 28 Years Later so far. The film is set nearly three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory (which was the basis for the first film, 28 Days Later), and some survivors have found ways to exist amidst the infected within a ruthlessly enforced quarantine. One group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the. mainland by a lone, heavily defended road and when one of the group leaves the island on a mission to the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.

“It’s three films, of which two have been shot,” Fiennes said previously. “Britain is 28 years into this terrible plague of infected people who are violent, rabid humans with a few pockets of uninfected communities. And it centers on a young boy who wants to find a doctor to help his dying mother. He leads his mother through this beautiful northern English terrain. 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.”

As for what to expect from 28 Years Later and beyond, screenwriter Alex Garland has also previously explained that this new trilogy is a different approach than what was taken for 28 Days Later — and very ambitious.

“This is very narratively ambitious. Danny and I understood that,” he said. “We tried to condense it, but its natural form felt like a trilogy.”

28 Years Later stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Alfie Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Erin Kellyman, and Edvin Ryding. The film is set to open in theaters June 20th. Its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, will open in theaters January 16, 2026.