The one-two punch of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s revived “28” franchise almost defined my moviegoing in 2025; the sequel, The Bone Temple, landed just a few days too late in January 2026. I can’t be too miffed — Bone Temple will stand as one of my favorites of this year — but with movies, timing is everything, and Sony’s strategy for rushing out part two in the dead of winter appears to have completely backfired to the point where we may never see 28 Years Later: The Conclusion.
Despite strong reviews and culty excitement, The Bone Temple has struggled to find an audience twice over. The movie’s theatrical run stalled out at roughly $58.5 million worldwide against a $63 million budget — a steep drop from 28 Years Later’s $150 million haul in the summer of 2025. And if the hope was that Netflix would provide a second life, well, the data so far suggests otherwise.
According to Nielsen figures (via World of Reel), The Bone Temple reportedly drew just 2.7 million viewers in its first six days on Netflix in the U.S. That’s dramatically behind the curve for comparable Sony releases that benefit from the same post-theatrical pipeline. In similar six-day windows, Venom: The Last Dance pulled in around 8.4 million viewers, while the much-maligned Madame Web managed roughly 10 million. Even the franchise’s own predecessor, 28 Years Later, fared better on streaming, debuting in Netflix’s Top 10 with around 3.2 million viewers in its first week and sustaining momentum globally.
What the hell is wrong with people??? The movies totally rock, each one in their own peculiar lane. Director Nia DaCosta seems just as perplexed as I am: In a recent interview with Empire, she noted that by nearly every internal metric, the movie performed like a hit. Then… audiences didn’t show up.
“I made a great film, and I’m really proud of it, and people liked it.” While fans only had to wait a matter of months between the two films hitting cinemas, DaCosta queries whether it was “maybe too soon, because people were like, ‘Oh yeah, I saw that last summer!’ I’m like, ‘No, no, so there’s a sequel!’”
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If a potential viewer only saw the poster art for The Bone Temple, one could understand the “I just saw this” confusion. But under the surface, the sequel is so much more than a continuation or a tee-up for a third movie. Jack O’Connell’s unhinged turn as the self-styled prophet Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal is mesmerizing, a performance that teeters between absurdity and genuine menace. Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes gets more room to breathe as Dr. Ian Kelson, grounding the chaos with a weary, humanist perspective and also giving THE dance performance of the year.
And then there’s the ending — not a post-credits stinger, but a deliberate segue tailored by DaCosta. After the main story concludes, we pivot to Jim, Cillian Murphy’s original protagonist, who’s living in isolation in a house that echoes where we last saw him decades ago. He’s raising a teenage girl, likely his daughter, and the scene unfolds with a calm homeschooling session. Interrupting the discussion of European history is our main characters from The Bone Temple on the run.
At the time of release, DaCosta wouldn’t tell us too much about Jim’s world. That’s because Garland has the third screenplay in the can. It’s why Murphy is on board as a producer of the new trilogy. Everyone involved is gung-ho to make part 3.
“I think the answers will come,” DaCosta told Polygon in January, which now just breaks my heart.
In a landscape where attention is fragmented and release windows blur together, even a great movie can slip through the cracks. But if The Bone Temple ends up being rediscovered — and it should be — it obviously won’t be because of algorithms or rollout strategies. It’ll be because, at its core, it’s exactly what this franchise needed: a bold bridge to whatever comes next.
What could save it? A re-release? A new Edge of Tomorrow versus Live Die Repeat title change? A set of new posters that look like a totally different movie than 28 Years Later? I’m not sure what else to do to convince people to watch this movie and beg the deep-pocketed millionaires who financed the first two movies to pony up for the trilogy-capper. I won’t be happy reading the script. Forget the comic version. I want the movie — a proper conclusion. But right now I couldn’t feel more pessimistic. Something something this is why we can’t have nice things.
