Director Danny Boyle floated the possibility of a ‘director’s cut’ during an interview with JOE.
Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) has revealed in a new interview with JOE that a gory moment from his new blockbuster, 28 Years Later, was cut after censor and studio pushback.
The filmmaker, however, floated the possibility of viewers getting to the scene someday via a director’s cut or DVD extra.
JOE were big fans of 28 Years Later, as evident by our rave review, which you can read right here.
The sequel to 28 Days Later revolves around a young boy named Spike (newcomer Alfie Williams), who leaves the safety of his English island to venture onto the zombie-infested mainland as part of a quest to save his family.
In our review of the new horror, we wrote: “In 28 Years Later, the ever-present zombie threat serves as a gateway to a surprisingly effective and emotional coming-of-age fable.
“That said, 28 Years Later eschews mawkishness thanks to its impressively deranged and gnarly zombie set-pieces, as well as its ghoulish sense of humour.”
JOE had an opportunity to interview Boyle in person in Dublin. This was hours before he attended a gala screening for the sequel in the Irish Film Institute (IFI).
Given the high levels of violence in the movie (for one thing, images of human spinal columns have been seared into my brain), we asked Boyle if there was a particularly gory moment or scene in 28 Years Later that led to him getting pushback from the studio or censors.
While not going into detail about specifics, he confirmed: “There’s one thing that I had to take out because of censors, studio, all those people.
“I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed to put in a director’s cut or a DVD extra or something like that. I’m just negotiating with them at the moment,” he said, laughing.
This was before adding: “But there is plenty [of gore] to be going home with in the meantime.”
Also, during our conversation with Boyle, we asked him about 28 Years Later opening with a shot of the children’s animated series Teletubbies.
In the film’s 2002-set prologue, a group of children are shown watching the programme.
It turns out this surprising introductory shot served two very important roles.
The director explained to JOE: “When you do a horror movie, if you can – you can’t always necessarily – but if you can have innocence in it, it’s a wonderful dynamic.
“The difference between innocence and horror, there couldn’t sort of be anything further apart. Obviously as soon as you’ve got that, you’re going to smash the two together.
“That’s the starting point with the Teletubbies.”
Boyle then added: “There was [another] serious reason. We wanted to recap what had happened in the original film, without a recap. We wanted an incident of something that was clearly time-located.
“Teletubbies aren’t as big now as they were back then. So, they had that frozen in time [quality].
“And yet, they’re sort of worldwide. They’re known. And probably people’s eyes roll when they think of them as adults, but actually there’s something lovely about them.”
Summing up the use of the Teletubbies, he said: “[They are] maximum innocence, frozen in time and it allowed us to recap the horrors… [of] the first film, before we then feature the title ’28 Years’ after that.”
28 Years Later is in cinemas now.
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