Movies about undead or infected monsters have been around for many decades, but many have connected 28 Days Later and the video game The Last of Us. Director Danny Boyle is among them, as he said in a new interview that he likes to joke that he and writer Alex Garland deserve a piece of the royalties for The Last of Us and The Walking Dead for inspiring those works.
Speaking to IndieWire, Boyle said one of the reasons why he and Garland decided to make a third entry in the series, 28 Years Later, was because of the ongoing popularity of the undead genre thanks to The Last of Us and The Walking Dead.
“It was clear that it had sustained its popularity. Not only the original film, but obviously the stuff like that that builds on the popularity of the idea. We always used to joke that we wish we’d got a percentage of The Walking Dead and The Last of Us and all this kind of stuff,” he said.