Cillian Murphy will be back for “28 Years Later” but 'in a surprising way,' says Sony Pictures chairman

The "Oppenheimer" star starred in 2002's "28 Days Later."

Danny Boyle's upcoming follow up to horror movie 28 Days Later will feature Cillian Murphy.

Tom Rothman, the chairman of the film's studio, Sony Motion Pictures Group, dropped the news Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. In an interview with Deadline, when he was asked whether Murphy would be back for 28 Years Later, the third in a trilogy, Rothman was clear.

"Yes, but in a surprising way and in a way that grows, let me put it that way," the executive said. "This is Danny at his best, combined with a very commercial genre, like we had with Edgar Wright and Baby Driver. Sometimes when you put a real signature director into a commercial arena, it elevates it."

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Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives of both Murphy and Boyle.

Sony announced that the new movie, which follows 2007's 28 Weeks Later as well as the 2002 original, will arrive in theaters in the summer blockbuster season in June 2025. When that was announced May 10, the Oppenheimer star was named as an executive producer on the project.

In the first of the movies, Murphy played bicycle courier Jim, who awakens from a coma to find that a mysterious virus had turned much of the population into zombie-like creatures. He and other survivors team up to fight back. It's unclear if Murphy will play the same part this go round.

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Murphy's had no shortage of work in big movies since he portrayed Jim. In addition to having played the title character in one of last year's biggest hits, he's played protagonist Thomas Shelby in award-winning TV series Peaky Blinders and villainous the Scarecrow in several Batman films.

In March, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight confirmed that Murphy would also be returning to his role for an upcoming film for that franchise.

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