Danny Boyle’s cult classic ‘Sunshine’ was supposed to be a trilogy

Danny Boyle has just revealed that his cult classic film Sunshine was supposed to be a trilogy.

While on the press tour for 28 Years Later, the third film in the post-apocalyptic 28 Days Later franchise, Boyle told Collider that Sunshine was originally set to have two more films to continue the storyline.

The film, which was released in 2007 and stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, and Michelle Yeoh, is about a group of astronauts on a mission to reignite the sun in the year 2057.

In the interview, Boyle said screenwriter Alex Garland had “extraordinary” ideas about expanding the plot to two more Sunshine films.

“Originally, when we were doing it, Alex wrote two other parts. It was supposed to be a trilogy,” Boyle said. “He [Garland] only wrote an outline. [But] it was a planetary trilogy. It was to do with the sun itself, with two other stories.”

In other Danny Boyle-related news, he also recently revealed that 28 Years Later is a response to Brexit and “retrenchment to older values”. Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said it was a very, very British film”.

“It’s not a political film, but when we started work on this, it came after Brexit and that retrenchment to older values, and you cannot help but think that this film is a response to that,” he explained. “The film is full of British actors, and our obsessions.”

He added: “I cannot imagine what the Americans are going to make of it. Obviously you’d love it to be a hit there, because they’ve given us the money, but really? We’ve made the film for here, my homeland.”

28 Years Later is set for release later in June – and will be followed by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DaCosta, which is due out next year. Meanwhile, 28 Years Later‘s trailer became the most-watched horror trailer of 2024, and the second-biggest ever.

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