‘28 Years Later,’ Sony Pictures’ highly anticipated sequel, has quickly established itself as the top horror ticket pre-seller of 2025. Within the first 24 hours of tickets going on sale Tuesday, the film outpaced advance sales for ‘Sinners’ and ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines,’ as well as 2024 horror hits ‘Nosferatu’ and ‘Alien: Romulus.’

The film’s impressive pre-sale numbers span across all major exhibitors, including Fandango.

The momentum behind director Danny Boyle’s return to the franchise kicked off when the first trailer for ‘28 Years Later’ debuted to a staggering 60.2 million global views within its first 24 hours. That figure made it the most-watched horror trailer launch of 2024, eclipsing ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ (46.6M), ‘Smile 2’ (33.1M), and ‘Nosferatu’ (26.4M). The trailer also dominated the Golden Trailer Awards, taking home three top honors: Best of Show, Most Original Trailer, and the Don LaFontaine Award for Best Voice Over.

Written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Alex Garland, ‘28 Years Later’ picks up nearly three decades after the original outbreak of the rage virus from a bioweapons lab. A small group of survivors now lives on a secluded island, connected to the mainland by a single fortified causeway. When one member ventures out into the ruins of civilization, he uncovers terrifying truths — not just about the infected, but about how humanity has adapted in horrifying ways.

The franchise began with 2002’s ‘28 Days Later,’ in which animal rights activists accidentally unleash a deadly virus by freeing infected chimpanzees. The story follows Cillian Murphy’s character, a bicycle courier who wakes from a coma in an abandoned hospital to find London — and the world — overtaken by the infected. The follow-up, ‘28 Weeks Later’ (2007), featured Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, and Robert Carlyle, expanding the world’s dystopian scope. Combined, the two films grossed nearly $150 million globally and were released under the Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic labels at the then-20th Century Fox.

Cillian Murphy reprises his role in ‘28 Years Later’ and also serves as executive producer. The cast includes Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, and Ralph Fiennes. The film is produced by Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice (former head of Searchlight), Bernard Bellow, Danny Boyle, and Alex Garland. The budget for this new installment is reportedly around $60 million.

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