Sony has released the first trailer for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, setting the second chapter of the revived horror saga for a January 16, 2026 theatrical debut and spotlighting Ralph Fiennes as the enigmatic Dr. Ian Kelson opposite Jack O’Connell’s cult leader Jimmy. The studio’s synopsis teases a world where surviving humans, not the infected, have become the fiercest threat, with Spike (Alfie Williams) drawn into a collision course between Jimmy’s gang and Kelson’s precarious moral code.
The new film is directed by Nia DaCosta from a script written and produced by Alex Garland, with Danny Boyle among the producers after directing this year’s 28 Years Later. Sony’s trailer rollout follows months of hints that The Bone Temple would expand the mainland storyline introduced in the first film and deepen the franchise’s emerging power struggle among survivors.
Footage and official materials point to the continued evolution of Kelson—seen memorializing the dead amid towering bone shrines—and to the looming presence of an “alpha” infected known as Samson, signaling a broader canvas for action and creature design. Industry coverage of the trailer underscores that Cillian Murphy will briefly reprise Jim in this installment, with Boyle indicating the character will figure far more prominently in the planned third film of the new trilogy.
The Bone Temple arrives barely seven months after the first film and was shot back-to-back with that entry, a production strategy that helps explain the quick turnaround and the sequel’s emphasis on narrative momentum. Cast additions include Emma Laird, Erin Kellyman and Chi Lewis-Parry, while returning figures O’Connell and Williams anchor the story’s human conflict.
Early write-ups of the trailer describe a harsher, more human-made menace on the mainland—cults, warlordism and precarious alliances—building on franchise themes of survival and moral compromise years after the Rage virus outbreak. The footage frames Kelson as both caretaker and catalyst, hinting at choices that could “change the world,” as the official synopsis puts it.
