He adds: “We hired all these girls to be traffic marshals. That changed with the millennia and we benefitted from deciding to shoot those early mornings in July.” CREDIT: Alamyīoyle agrees: “The central city security was almost unrecognisably relaxed compared to what you will understand as city centre security now. (L-R) Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris. “It wasn’t really connecting but Danny kept asking me back, which was really nice. “Jim was written as English – and I was doing a terrible London accent ,” recalls the Cork-born star.

I met Christopher Nolan through that, so it was massive for me.” Murphy and Nolan would go on to collaborate on six more movies together, including Batman Begins, Inception and the upcoming Oppenheimer – but he says he’ll always remember his big break. “It opened doors for me,” he says over Zoom, while fixing himself a cuppa. Budgeted below £7million, 28 Days Later made more than £73m at the box office – a huge hit.įor Murphy, who’d spent the previous five years making short films and Irish indies, the success came just at the right time. They’re promised a cure via military broadcast, yet the ulterior motives of Major Henry (Christopher Eccleston) are soon laid bare, leading to a ferocious game of cat-and-mouse. After that atmospheric introduction in London, Jim journeys to Manchester with fellow survivors Selena (Naomie Harris), Hannah (Megan Burns) and Frank (Brendan Gleeson). The film stars Cillian Murphy as Jim, who awakens from a coma four weeks after a dangerous virus rages across the land – transforming swathes of the population into red-eyed, murderous zombies. We complain how overcrowded are and about the stress, and then in an instant, life as we know it in many, many different forms can empty them.” “‘He wanders around London on his own’ and you just thought ‘Oh my God!’ What an amazing idea: a deserted London. “It was like a quarter of a page,” he continues, gleefully recounting his first impressions of the story. “I remember reading the first ten pages of, thinking ‘This is brilliant.’” “I instantly knew the film was something very special,” Boyle tells NME via video call two months earlier. It’s the opening moments of Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece 28 Days Later, first released 20 years ago this week. A scraggy bloke in medical scrubs meanders across an empty Westminster Bridge scattered litter the only remnant of civilisation as Godspeed You! Black Emperor‘s doomy track ‘East Hastings’ plays in the background.

28 weeks later box office