28 Years Later’s Cillian Murphy Mystery Has Already Been Solved

Not quite 28 years later, filmmakers Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are returning to the zombie tale that revitalized and evolved the zombie genre. The horror story that kicked off with 2001’s 28 Days Later and continued in 2007’s 28 Weeks Later jumps forward almost three decades to a world completely changed by the Rage Virus.

In fact, the first trailer for the long-awaited third installment reveals an England where survivors armed with bows and arrows live in primitive settlements and a filthy Ralph Fiennes stalks around a temple-like structure made of human skulls. But there was another moment in the trailer that eagle-eyed fans immediately latched onto as soon as it was released: a shot (at 1:47) of an extremely emaciated infected that bore a passing resemblance to Cillian Murphy’s Jim. This sent some viewers into a frenzy, claiming that the trailer had confirmed Jim’s dark fate after the end of the original movie.

While news of Jim’s downfall wouldn’t have been completely outside of the realm of possibility if he happened to be one of the people who returned to England to re-settle the country right before things went to absolute hell in 28 Weeks Later, The Guardian has confirmed this isn’t Murphy we’re looking at. It’s an art dealer named Angus Neill, who was cast to play this particular zombie by Boyle himself.

“Danny told me he’d always had me in mind for the role,” Neill told The Guardian. “So we met up, hit it off, and I agreed to take part.”

Fans think Cillian Murphy is an infected in #28YearsLater 😳🧟‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/sK7Wu8ScxJ

— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) December 10, 2024

So yes, you can stop panicking now. In fact, Jim’s offscreen death always seemed a bit far-fetched. A big deal was made about Murphy’s return to the franchise earlier this year. Bringing back the Oppenheimer actor just for a cameo as a walking corpse would have certainly been a weird choice. Not to mention that Murphy was spotted filming scenes as Not A Zombie Jim as recently as September. Instead, it looks like this first trailer doesn’t feature Jim at all, so we’ll have to wait a little longer to see what he’s been up to since 2001.

Most of the rest of the trailer revolves around Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Alfie Wilson journeying through rural England, while in another thread, a group of armed soldiers become zombie food. It’s unclear how the two storylines tie into each other, or how creepy Ralph Fiennes and his skull tower fit in, but the trailer certainly leaves us wanting more. It’s refreshing in this day and age to get a trailer that doesn’t hand out a bunch of answers before you’ve even sat down to watch the movie.

Also, shout out to the person who chose the Rudyard Kipling’s disturbing poem “Boots” (read by actor Taylor Holmes in the trailer) to accompany the terrifying images on screen. Meant to evoke the repetitive thoughts of a British infantryman marching to his doom in South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), Kipling’s 1903 poem is the perfect companion to Taylor-Johnson and Comer’s own march through the zombie-infested hills of England.

28 Years Later, which is out in theaters on June 20, 2025, is just the first installment in a planned trilogy of zombie flicks penned by Boyle and Garland. While Boyle is back in the director’s chair for this next entry, a sequel titled 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple will be helmed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman).