ScreenRant’s new ranking puts 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple among the seven best post-apocalyptic films ever made, next to Dawn of the Dead and Mad Max: Fury Road. Five months after its January release, the movie still hasn’t earned back its $63 million budget.
Critics call it the sharpest movie in the rage-virus franchise since Danny Boyle’s 2002 original, and audiences liked it even more than they liked its predecessor. Ticket sales did not follow. The trilogy’s promised third chapter now hangs on a movie still stuck in the red.
A Sequel Ranked Above Its Own Original
Zach Moser, a ScreenRant film writer, built his list around a simple dare: name six or seven movies that beat Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later at its own game. Half the entries are Cold War relics and Miyazaki manga. The seventh is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a film that exists inside the same rage-virus universe Boyle created, meaning the list uses a sequel to argue against its own origin story.
The full lineup spans 48 years of collapse, contagion and radiation:
- Dawn of the Dead (1978) – George Romero’s mall-set sequel to Night of the Living Dead turned consumerism into satire as much as horror.
- The Day After (1983) – ABC’s nuclear war TV movie drew more than 100 million viewers, per the Lakeland Ledger, one of the most-watched broadcasts in American history.
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) – Hayao Miyazaki adapted his own manga into an animated epic set a thousand years after a war that poisoned Earth’s biomes.
- Threads (1984) – A nuclear exchange guts Sheffield, England, the same city now pushing a 2040 Olympic bid on shuttered tracks that sit closed three days a week.
- Children of Men (2006) – Alfonso Cuarón imagined civilization undone by eighteen years without a single birth, not a bomb or a virus.
- Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – George Miller’s practical-effects chase film reset the bar for what a post-apocalyptic action movie could look like.
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) – Nia DaCosta’s continuation of Boyle’s saga, the newest film on the list and the one carrying real financial strain.
That last entry is the one worth sitting with. It’s rare for a franchise sequel to get cited as proof its own predecessor can be beaten, and rarer still for that sequel to be doing so while its accountants are still waiting on the movie to turn a profit.
Critics Call It the Franchise’s Best Since 2002
Moser’s list leans on quality, and by the numbers, the acclaim checks out. The Bone Temple carries a 92% critics’ score across 333 reviews, with an 88% audience score built from more than 1,000 verified ratings.
A direct continuation of 28 Years Later that ups the gore while deepening the dread, The Bone Temple is finely adorned by Nia DaCosta’s unnerving direction as well as Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell’s inspired performances.
That’s Rotten Tomatoes’ official critics’ consensus, and individual reviews lined up behind DaCosta taking Boyle’s chair for the first time in the series. Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Ian Kelson, attempting to revive humanity in an Infected named Samson. Jack O’Connell plays Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, the self-styled son of Satan.
The number fits a pattern across four films. 28 Days Later opened in 2002 to an 87% critics’ score. Its first sequel, 28 Weeks Later, slipped to 72% in 2007. When Boyle returned in 2025 with 28 Years Later, critics pushed the score to 94%, the highest of the series, though audiences split hard on it, landing at just 68% on the Popcornmeter. The Bone Temple flipped that split: a slightly lower critics’ number, but audiences far more won over than they were the first time.
The Numbers Don’t Match the Reviews
That goodwill didn’t show up at the box office. The Bone Temple opened over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to $13 million domestically across the traditional three days, or $15 million counting the full four-day holiday frame, well under the $20 million to $22 million that trackers had projected going in.
| Metric | 28 Years Later (2025) | The Bone Temple (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic opening | $30 million (three-day) | $13 million (three-day) / $15 million (four-day) |
| Worldwide debut | Not separately reported | $31.2 million |
| Production budget | Not disclosed in reporting | $63 million |
| Global total to date | $151 million (final) | About $50 million |
The predecessor opened to $30 million domestically in June 2025 on its way to a $151 million global run. The Bone Temple’s worldwide debut came in at $31.2 million, and the opening wasn’t even large enough to knock Avatar: Fire and Ash from first place, a film already in its fifth weekend of release, according to Variety’s box office tracking.
Six weeks later, domestic ticket sales had crept toward roughly $25 million, per tracking cited by Koimoi, with worldwide receipts crossing a $50 million milestone that ScreenRant’s own box office follow-up flagged as still short of the $63 million budget. Films typically need to clear well beyond their raw budget, often twice as much, to cover marketing and theater splits, which makes the real shortfall larger than the headline gap suggests.
Why the Opening Fell Flat
The Hollywood Reporter called the opening soft. SlashFilm ran down five separate reasons for the miss. Bloody Disgusting settled on the plainest explanation: a $15 million four-day haul against a $63 million budget, arriving seven months after the first film and fighting for screens against a five-week-old Avatar sequel still packing auditoriums.
Sony shot the first two films back to back on a compressed schedule, then handed the second installment to a different director. Nia DaCosta took over behind the camera for The Bone Temple, the first mainline film in the franchise’s history that Boyle didn’t direct himself. A holiday date, a rushed turnaround and a new director’s hand all landed in the same release window.
Is a Third 28 Years Later Movie Happening?
Yes. Sony has greenlit a third film, Alex Garland is writing the script, and Danny Boyle has said he wants to direct the finale himself. Cillian Murphy, who played Jim in the 2002 original, is in talks to return. No release date, cast lineup or production start has been confirmed.
Deadline reported in May 2026 that Boyle hopes to begin shooting next year, which would put a finished third film into 2027 at the earliest given the gap the franchise has kept between production and release. The project already has a placeholder entry under an unrevealed title, though the listing carries no confirmed date.
What we know:
- Sony has greenlit a third film to close out the trilogy.
- Alex Garland is writing the script.
- Danny Boyle has said he wants to direct the finale.
- Cillian Murphy is in talks to reprise his original role.
What’s unconfirmed:
- No release date or production start has been set.
- Whether Boyle is formally attached, beyond his stated interest.
- Whether Nia DaCosta returns in any capacity.
- How The Bone Temple’s box office shortfall affects the budget or marketing plans for the finale.
A Bigger Comeback Year for the Undead
The Bone Temple’s money trouble hasn’t stopped the wider zombie genre from having a strong year. Industry trackers have called 2026 a comeback stretch for the undead, after a decade when prestige television and superhero spectacle crowded out old-fashioned monster movies. The year opened with Daisy Ridley’s We Bury the Dead and The Bone Temple arriving within weeks of each other, followed by a Korean zombie thriller called Colony and a rebooted Resident Evil built around survival horror.
Sony now has two data points on the trilogy it bet on: a first film that thrilled critics and split audiences, and a second that reversed the split but still hasn’t cleared its budget. Whatever Garland writes for the third film has to solve both problems at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Happens in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple?
Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Ian Kelson, a scientist trying to revive humanity in an Infected man named Samson, played by Chi Lewis-Perry. Jack O’Connell plays Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, a violent cult leader who styles himself the son of Satan, and much of the film’s brutality flows from his storyline.
Will Danny Boyle Direct the Third 28 Years Later Movie?
He has said he wants to. Deadline reported in May 2026 that Boyle hopes to start filming next year, though he isn’t formally confirmed as attached yet. Cillian Murphy, star of the 2002 original, is in separate talks to return alongside him.
Has 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Made Back Its Budget?
Not as of its most recent milestone report. Global earnings sit around $50 million against a $63 million budget, and the usual industry rule of thumb, clearing roughly twice a film’s budget to cover marketing and theater splits, means the real gap is likely wider than the raw numbers show.
Is the Zombie Genre Making a Comeback in 2026?
Yes. Industry coverage has pointed to a broader horror resurgence this year, with the global horror film and TV market projected to reach $182.23 billion by 2032 at a 7.2% annual growth rate, and zombie-specific search interest holding consistently high through 2026’s run of releases.
