Alex Garland is crediting “The Last of Us” for making his sequel film “28 Years Later” even better.
Garland, who penned original 2002 zombie film “28 Days Later” and returns to write the third feature “28 Years Later,” said during the “Creator to Creator” podcast in the below video that it was “The Last of Us” video game that inspired him to up his own “game” as a screenwriter.
Neil Druckmann, the creator of the original “The Last of Us” game and co-creator of the HBO series adaptation with Craig Mazin, was in discussion with Garland for the panel.
“I was so inspired by your work,” Garland said to Druckmann. “‘The Last of Us’ is better than ’28 Days Later.’ The thing about ‘The Last of Us,’ I was like, this is so much more sophisticated. It was very nice for me with ‘The Last of Us’ to sort of feel like someone saying, ‘Where’s your game?’”
Garland explained that his first film in the franchise, “28 Days Later,” was influenced by “Resident Evil” and “Dawn of the Dead.” The plot for “28 Years Later,” though, had more “The Last of Us” parallels, something that Garland credited to “The Last of Us” being such a force in the zeitgeist. Yet he had to convince “28 Days Later” director Danny Boyle to be onboard for the “28 Years Later” concept, first. Garland’s script has been circulating since 2019, with Boyle saying in 2022 that he was “very tempted” to direct; the film now will be released in 2025.
“I had this really odd idea [for ’28 Years Later’],” Garland said, adding, “I think there is something slightly irreverent or slightly punk somewhere in what I do. I had an idea where the heroes were Chinese Special Forces and the UK had been quarantined and China had discovered that the virus had been weaponized and in order to protect themselves, they had to get to a lab in the UK where the virus was created. If you had the source virus, you could create a vaccine. Danny Boyle read it and he kind of said, ‘Yeah, OK. I sort of want to do this.’ But I know Danny very well and I could see that he didn’t really want to do it at all.”
Garland continued, “And then I was thinking, ‘Why doesn’t he like it? It’s just not that good…’ And then I thought I should be much stranger with this, much odder, so I made a completely different story, which in truth has a ‘Last of Us’ connection. ‘Last of Us’ had such an impact on me.”
Druckmann in turn said, “I find it such a compliment. […] There’s a direct line between the fast infected [in ’28 Days Later’] and the infected in ‘The Last of Us.’”
Garland, who is now co-directing military thriller “Warfare” with Navy Seal veteran Ray Mendoza, said that he used to never revisit his past films, including “28 Days Later.” It wasn’t until he had to create story ideas for 2007 sequel “28 Weeks Later” that Garland looked back at his own career.
“For years and years and years, I never rewatched any film I’ve worked on,” he said. “I’ve only rewatched one, actually, ‘Dread.’”
He added of his filmography, “I was pleased not to be the director [of ’28 Years Later’]. I’d been the director for a few years and I was sort of done with it in various ways.” He added that co-directing “Warfare” with Mendoza made “the job a lot easier.”
As for Druckmann and “The Last of Us,” the series adaptation is debuting its Season 2 in 2025. The show is also renewed for Season 3. “I’ve always believed games are capable of so much more than people are giving them credit [for],” Druckmann said.
Check out the full video below.
