This summer’s 28 Years Later ended on a maddening, disturbing cliffhanger. Spike (Alfie Williams) decided to leave his family and its safe village to explore the world, only to run into the insane Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) and his jumpsuit-wearing gang. What did this have to do with the film we’d been watching? What did it have to do with what’s coming next? We finally have some answers.
Those answers are coming in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which opens in theaters January 16, 2026. That’s a heck of a quick turnaround for a sequel but director Nia DaCosta filmed it right off the back of this year’s film, directed by Danny Boyle. Speaking to Rolling Stone ahead of the film’s trailer on Wednesday, September 3, DaCosta revealed that Spike and his story are the throughline of the franchise. Plus, in The Bone Temple, he’ll be torn between the violent, wild Jimmy clan and that of Dr. Kelson, Ralph Fiennes’ character from the previous film, with whom Spike bonded.
“What’s cool about The Bone Temple is we have the Jimmies and their world, and we have Kelson and his world,” DaCosta said. “Spike moves between the two, so it was really fun to be able to have a different style of filming for each character.” Plus, Kelson’s story tied in with Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), the breakout Alpha zombie of the last film, best known for being very naked throughout.
Besides following Spike and learning more about Jimmy, Dr. Kelson, and Sampson, The Bone Temple will also explain more about the state of the world. “The world expands,” DaCosta said. “We get a glimpse of other types of the 28-years-later effect.”
You can read more from DaCosta as well as her star, Jack O’Connell, at Rolling Stone. And it’s O’Connell that offers maybe the best tease of what to expect on January 16, 2026. “This film is the weird, deranged cousin to 28 Years Later, who you might be a bit ashamed of because they have weird, questionable interests,” O’Connell said. “We see how much nature is the unstoppable force at the end of the day. Nature prevails. The world will take its natural course with or without humans. But I don’t think the infected are purely antagonists in our film. It definitely will make you consider that.”
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