Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s new zombie apocalypse film was inspired by Brexit, a writer has revealed.
Alex Garland, one of the co-creators of upcoming horror film ’28 years later’, has said that the new film was inspired by the abandonment of the UK following its majority leave vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
The writer said that when coming up with the script, he used his memory of the rest of the world ‘turning their backs’ on Britain as a backdrop for creating the film’s apocalyptic scenes.
Speaking to Enquire magazine, Garland professed to Brexit holding greater creative influence over the film than the Covid pandemic.
‘Covid was not on my mind because it was too recent and too present, but Brexit was’, he said.
Expanding on this sentiment, he added that the referendum’s results offered up ‘a sense of the globe just sort of shifting its position’.
Garland has previously worked on other box-office hits such as ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Annihilation’.
The new thriller, which will be directed by Boyle, forms part of a trilogy which is set to star Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle ‘s new zombie apocalypse film was inspired by Brexit , a writer has revealed
Alex Garland, one of the co-creators of horror film ’28 years later’, has said that the new film was inspired by the abandonment of the UK following its majority leave vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum
Boyle and Garland previously teamed up together to create the acclaimed 2002 zombie horror film ’28 days later’
‘Slumdog Millionaire’ director Boyle publicly backed the remain campaign in the 2016 referendum, the opposing side to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who spearheaded the leave campaign
The film depicts the UK three decades after a virus escaped into the public realm from a biological weapons lab, leaving most people monsters.
Garland explained that he and Boyle ‘would spend a lot of time talking about this’ time jump.
Boyle and Garland previously teamed up together to create the acclaimed 2002 zombie horror film ’28 days later’, which starred Irish duo Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson.
That film has since been credited with ‘introducing’ the ‘fast zombie’ genre to Hollywood and paving the way for other blockbuster horrors such as World Z.
‘Slumdog Millionaire’ director Boyle publicly backed the remain campaign in the 2016 referendum.
The 68-year-old filmmaker recently stated how he and Garland did not want to set their new zombie thriller in London once again.
‘We avoided towns and cities, partly… because of how dangerous they’d be.
‘But also because we made such an impression with the first one with how we depicted London, we thought we’d be crazy to try to top that’, he said.
