Alex Garland says referendum had more influence than Covid on script for upcoming horror, 28 Years Later

Brexit served as the inspiration behind the latest British zombie apocalypse film, a writer has revealed.

Alex Garland, the co-creator of the upcoming horror movie, 28 Years Later, alongside Danny Boyle, the director, said he was influenced to write the script after the rest of the world seemed to “turn their backs” on Britain.

The screenwriter, who was also behind Ex Machina and Annihilation, admitted that the referendum that led to Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2016 served as a greater inspiration for the film’s apocalyptic material than Covid did.

Speaking to Empire magazine, he said: “Covid was not on my mind because it was too recent and too present, but Brexit was.”

He explained that the seismic political decision gave him “a sense of the globe just sort of shifting its position”.

He added: “Turning their backs, not really looking in this direction. Not really giving a s— [about the UK].”

The horror film depicts the country three decades after a virus escaped from a biological weapons laboratory and infected most of the population, turning them into monsters. It follows a small group of survivors living away from the mainland.

Garland and Boyle are the pair behind the hit zombie horror film, 28 Days Later, released in 2002 starring Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson.

Their movie has been credited with introducing “fast zombies” to Hollywood and inspiring blockbuster horror films such as World War Z and TV shows including The Walking Dead and The Last of Us.

In their latest instalment, Andrew Macdonald, the film’s producer, explained that it portrays the UK 28 years after the initial infection, ravaged by the virus while the rest of the world remains largely untouched.

“Nothing is allowed into Britain and nothing is allowed out,” he said of the country’s largely infected population in the movie. He added: “Britain has paused.”

The new thriller, part of a future trilogy starring Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is set almost three decades after the first movie, intentionally, so that the pre-virus world would seem almost mythical to some.

Garland explained that he and Boyle “would spend a lot of time talking about this” time jump.

He added: “What would it mean? What has changed? What does it do to someone who doesn’t remember, half-remembers, fully remembers?

“We have generations. We have people who fully remember [a time before], people who have no way of remembering, and then points in-between. That’s where the story came out of.”

Boyle, who was among a score of British stars who publicly backed remaining in the EU in 2016, also said that the pair did not want to set the film in London again.

The director said: “We avoided towns and cities, partly because of survival instinct [of the characters], because of how dangerous they’d be.

“But also because we made such an impression with the first one with how we depicted London, we thought we’d be crazy to try to top that.”

While the evolution of the virus in the upcoming film remains largely under wraps, Comer said the scenes with the zombies are horrifying.

The actress said: “The thing about our stunt performers playing the infected is they really don’t take the speed off for you.”

“They chase you,” she told Empire, adding: “There were so many moments where I felt like I was actually running for my life!”