28 Weeks Later

[MacGuffin]

28 Sequels Later
From Days to Weeks.

In announcing their new youth-oriented film division, dubbed Fox Atomic, Fox Searchlight also unveiled Atomic's slate of films that are currently in the works. Among those being actively developed is 28 Weeks Later, a sequel to the 2002 British sleeper hit 28 Days Later.

Variety says that 28 Weeks Later will be produced by Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Andrew Macdonald. Boyle directed the first film. Garland, who penned the first film, will script the sequel as well.

The trade adds, "The first release from Fox Atomic is expected by the end of the year, and a full slate of pics is expected for 2007."

Variety previously reported in June 2004 that a sequel was in the works but that Boyle would likely not return to helm it and that Rowan Joffe would write the screenplay.

[MacGuffin]

28 Weeks Later Buzz
Harris chimes in on zombie sequel.

During an off-camera chat during Saturday's taped interviews for Miami Vice, IGN FilmForce got the chance to ask British actress Naomie Harris about 28 Weeks Later, Fox Atomic's planned sequel to the zombie sensation 28 Days Later.

The actress admitted that she had no idea whether she'd be in the movie or not but she did reveal that she was recently on a London-to-L.A. flight with 28 producer Andrew Macdonald, who advised her that there may be a part for her in the sequel.

Harris expressed interest in reprising her role as the tough survivor Selana but she did not know anything further about the sequel. She said the script is still being written (by Rowan Joffe) so it is possible that Selena might not end up in it.

28 Weeks Later will be directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

[ProgWRX]

no danny boyle? im guessing also no cillian murphy?  mehh

[MacGuffin]

Rough Teaser Trailer here.

Release Date: May 11, 2007

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau Jr, Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Catherine McCormack
 
Directed by: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto)

Premise: Six months after the rage virus has annihilated the British Isles, the US Army declares that the war against infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. In the first wave of returning refugees, a family is reunited -- but one of them unwittingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever.

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[polkablues]

I can't get the trailer to play for some reason, but that is a great fucking one-sheet.

[MacGuffin]

I can't get the trailer to play for some reason

I couldn't either, but the HD played fine.

[mogwai]

that was lovely.

[elpablo]

I think the downgrade from Godspeed to Muse describes this movie perfectly

[RegularKarate]

28 Weeks Later: Book of Shadows

[MacGuffin]

International Trailer here.

[squints]

I think the downgrade from Godspeed to Muse describes this movie perfectly

agreed

[MacGuffin]

New International Trailer

[cron]

today i saw  juan carlos fresnadillo's iNTACTO and i gotta say i was pretty impressed. it's a neat film. this movie will be good. i'd really rather watch this one than spider-man 3. the end

[MacGuffin]

Juan of the dead
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, director of zombie movie 28 Weeks Later, talks about rage, suffering, Iraq, the Virginia Tech killings and the guilt of the survivor.
Source: Guardian Unlimited

When Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was a child, growing up in Tenerife, two Boeing 747 planes collided on the island's runway in 1977, killing over 500 people. Fresnadillo saw it happen, from the backseat of his parents'car. In his new film, 28 Weeks Later, the plot hinges on the idea that the infected seek revenge for the pain they experienced. Fresnadillo says he is dramatising a statement of Aristotle's: "rage occurs when a person gives back their own suffering".

"It is disgusting to me that in Spain every day you read stories in the newspapers about men abusing their wives. I thought a lot about that, where it comes from. I think these men must be suffering in another place, perhaps they had a difficult upbringing, or they work a terrible job. The men you read about who come back from fighting at war and beat their wives, they are giving back their own suffering. The man is a victim as well. Obviously the clear victim is the wife, but the man has suffered too I believe, at some point. I am not justifying this; I am analyzing it, and giving it context."

Fresnadillo is talking about the sequel to 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle's zombie-horror original followed a group who survived infection from the rabies-like "rage" virus that attacked Britain. 28 Weeks Later shows the US army taking charge of the repopulation of the country from a secured Isle of Dogs.

Zombies are the kind of monsters that don't just come out at night; they tend to turn up at times of social anxiety. They haunted us during the cold war, and in the dark days of Vietnam, and it is no surprise to see them back again, the embodiment of our paranoid post 9-11 climate. But it's not so simple, Fresnadillo tells me. The film's source is both more general and more specific, rooted in the culture he comes from.

"My grandfather was in the military, fighting under Franco. I was raised in a Catholic country, a controlled country," he says. This is Spain's own lurking horror, the civil war. "Rage is the main antagonist in this movie. Rage is a human feeling. We are surrounded by rage, you can read about it in the newspapers, watch it on TV. This movie is about people who are obsessed with control, with power. There is always a gap in power. The military set up a controlled area. They try to control the repopulation. They lose the control, because you can't keep order over human feelings. The control is destroyed because there are people feeling."

He is wearing all black, younger than you would expect, and a thoughtful man. Having won widespread acclaim with his first film Intacto, Fresnadillo was suggested by Danny Boyle as the sequel director, allowing him the freedom to create a movie out of his own materials. Fresnadillo turned the concept inside out. The undead are mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, attacking people, attacking each other. "I think it is more powerful when you realise someone has a dark side," he explains.

Fresnadillo puts a human aspect into the horror. The infected, despite their inhuman behaviour, are still human. Nor is the depiction of the US army critical, Fresnadillo argues; it is real. "People don't like to feel like they could lose control. Evil is an easy word to escape the reality. It is more scary to think of those that act violently as human. I don't have bad guys and good guys."

28 Weeks Later looks very real, shot in documentary style on handheld cameras. Like the first film, the cast are not shiny Hollywood stars. You can see an Iraq analogy in this film. "The film is full of reality and present time. When you are making something this real, then it acts as a mirror, and it can reflect what is going on right now," Fresnadillo admits. "I want the movie to make you think about the world we live in. I want people to find things in it that I didn't intend. It means the movie is alive, that it is telling us something about reality."

He starts talking about the Virginia Tech killings. The media, he says, blamed it on Oldboy. "That was a Korean movie, not an American movie. It was made by a Korean director. For America, they're the bad guys. How quickly people decided that Oldboy was the Bible of the evil people. Something like that happens, people want to put a label on it, control it. They want to say, 'the killer, he is not a part of me, he is the other'."

Fresnadillo tells me he has an interest in the "guilt of the survivor". He starts talking about Virginia Tech again. Did I read about the teacher who sacrificed his life for the students? When Seung-Hui Cho came to one classroom, the teacher held the door shut with the force of his body and told the students to jump out the windows. When the door was opened, he was killed. Did I know he was a Holocaust survivor? "I suppose it was some kind of redemption for this man, sacrificing his life," says Fresnadillo.

His frown shows he is figuring this out. Fresnadillo tracks back the central character of 28 Weeks Later, Don's motivation. "He feels guilt for surviving the attack on him and his wife, and that is the suffering he bears." At the premiere, he looked around at the audience and believed, despite the gore, they appeared so shocked because the "actors are playing from a very human place".

"Zombies are a fantasy," Fresnadillo explains. He's tried to make a movie that untwists the knots in our reality. The more real it is, the more scary it is. But, he tells me, "in a fun way."