“The actual story follows a group of survivors trying to make their way to safety after the virus has broken out of the laboratory and swept across Britain and possibly the world. Britain has been largely evacuated which has lead to a kind of apocalyptic landscape,“ explains Boyle. “It was important to me to junk the idea of civil contingencies. A virus is something that you cannot necessarily put up a defense against. This particular virus was to be something so virulent as to be uncontrollable, something that can’t be defended against because it’s actually part of us – rage. At the present moment there’s no such thing as a psychological virus, but who knows what can happen? Just recently two German scientists were able to create a totally synthetic Polio virus within a matter of years with materials bought over the internet. While Polio has a relatively simple genetic structure, the knowledge is there to be able to create a more complex virus, smallpox for instance – it’s more a matter of time constraints rather than technical capability.”
Structurally the film begins after the virus has ravaged Britain. Something that appealed to director Danny Boyle, “The fact that the story begins 28 days later, is that the audience starts to unravel things in retrospect. There are physical bits of evidence and the audience fills in with their own imagination as to the horrors that have happened to get to this stage. It’s a wonderful quality, saves millions on the budget and it comes from Alex’s gift as a writer.”
Fifty percent of the funding came from the lottery through Andrew Macdonald and Duncan Kenworthy’s company DNA and fifty per cent from Fox Searchlight Pictures. Peter Rice, President of Fox Searchlight, read the script in Cannes in May 2001 and responded immediately with his interest. “It was fantastic to get Fox involved as we have had a long relationship with them and in particular with Peter Rice,” says Boyle. “Peter has been very loyal and typically there was no pressure about casting or content of the film, so it was a very valuable relationship”.
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