{"id":209663,"date":"2025-06-24T06:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T06:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/209663\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T06:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T06:22:09","slug":"28-years-later-marketing-hid-mother-son-tearjerker-due-to-studio-worries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/209663\/","title":{"rendered":"’28 Years Later’ Marketing Hid Mother-Son Tearjerker Due to Studio Worries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201c28 Years Later<\/a>\u201d dazzled film critics with its zombie thrills and genre shifts, but the latter has made it a tougher pill to swallow for moviegoers. The long-awaited sequel has divided audiences with its out-of-left-field final scene<\/a> and unexpected story pivots. \u201c28 Years Later\u201d begins as an intense zombie survival thriller between a father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his son (Alfie Williams), but its second half evolves into a spiritual tearjerker between a mother (Jodie Comer) and her son. None of the marketing for \u201c28 Years Later\u201d suggested audience members might bawl during the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs noted by The Independent <\/a>in its recent Danny Boyle<\/a> profile: \u201cYou will cry. Possibly more than once. Boyle admits that this particular strain of the plot has been kept quiet in the film\u2019s promotional materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously, the core audience is a horror audience, and they\u2019re concerned if too many reviews call it a weepie\u2026 But the first film was actually very moving, too,\u201d Boyle said, noting such emotional moments as when Brendan Gleeson\u2019s father becomes infected and urges his young daughter to flee from him. \u201cSo [hiding the film\u2019s tearjerker story] is born out of the right instincts. They\u2019re just a bit worried [about selling it on that]\u2026 Yeah, \u2018you\u2019ll weep with terror.\u2019 That\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c28 Years Later\u201d marks Boyle\u2019s return to the zombie franchise he started with 2002\u2019s \u201c28 Days Later.\u201d Juan Carlos Fresnadillo took over directing duties on the 2007 sequel \u201c28 Weeks Later.\u201d Speaking to Variety<\/a> in a recent interview, Boyle noted a significant difference between releasing horror movies more than two decades apart.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWomen now form an important part of the horror audience,\u201d the director said. \u201cI remember vividly someone telling \u2014\u00a0somebody in authority, somebody who seemed to know what they were talking about \u2014 when we made the first film, they said, \u2018No women will see this film.\u2019 I remember we were trying to big up Naomie Harris\u2019 character in the first film, and I think it was probably a conversation about that. They were dismissive of women watching horror movies. That\u2019s changed and I think that\u2019s a very good thing, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s also perhaps a contribution to why horror has sustained as a genre, and why horror is important for us to maintain the communal cinema experience, because it\u2019s one of those things that people clearly still want to see in a cinema if they can,\u201d Boyle added. \u201cTheir preference is to see it in a cinema. And we should celebrate that, because of those communal experiences as we live life more and more through the technology power that we have in our pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile moviegoers are either loving or hating the tonal shifts in \u201c28 Years Later,\u201d Sony\u2019s decision to market the movie solely as a horror film clearly paid off as \u201cYears\u201d earned $30 million in its domestic box office debut. That\u2019s the biggest launch ever in the \u201c28\u201d horror franchise. The sequel, \u201c28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,\u201d arrives in theaters in January 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201c28 Years Later\u201d dazzled film critics with its zombie thrills and genre shifts, but the latter has made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[16475,48891,77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-209663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-28-years-later","9":"tag-danny-boyle","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114736906150849274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}