But zooming in reveals that the long lens isn’t attached to a regular camera body or a high-end modular system such as the Achtel 9×7. Instead, it is connected to a protective cage holding something that could be an iPhone, a professional camera operator not involved with the movie told WIRED.
The use of Apple smartphones as the principal camera system on 28 Years Later was subsequently confirmed to WIRED by several people connected with the movie, detailing that the particular model used to shoot was the iPhone 15 Pro Max. (Evidently, filming took place too early for Boyle and Mantle to get their hands on the new iPhone 16 series.)
The iPhone in the paparazzi photo is held by an aluminum cage fitted with a lens attachment adapter. Beast makes such cages and adapters, adjusted with distinctive red knobs (there’s such an adjustment knob visible in the photograph), and its latest DOF (depth of field) adapter allows the attachment of full-frame DSLR lenses to smartphones. The lens-shaped adapter, released in March, projects the image from the DSLR lens onto the surface of its screen, and the smartphone records this projection.
Several arthouse films have been shot with iPhones, including Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) and the Steven Soderbergh drama Unsane (2018), but these movies were limited-release, low-budget offerings compared to 28 Years Later. The new film’s $75 million budget is only part of the franchise’s total, with 28 Years Later being the first of a new trilogy; all three coming zombie films are being scripted by screenwriter Alex Garland, who is reuniting with Boyle and Mantle after helming Civil War, released earlier this year.
Another key team member from the 2002 movie is back for at least one film in the new trilogy: Long before his razor-blades-in-flat-caps role in the gritty TV show Peaky Blinders—or his Oscar-winning, Bhagavad Gita–quoting performance in Oppenheimer (2023)—Cillian Murphy’s breakout role was as the lead actor in 28 Days Later. A full-frontal wide shot of him lying naked on a gurney was Murphy’s introduction to the limelight. (Murphy didn’t appear in the Boyle-produced 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later. This movie, starring Robert Carlyle and Idris Elba, and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, was shot on film, and enjoys the same cult status as the first.)
There are no details yet on the plot for 28 Years Later, or whether Murphy stars in all three movies of the upcoming trilogy.
In the original movie, Murphy, then just 26, played Jim, a confused bicycle messenger waking from a coma in a deserted London hospital a month after being hit and injured in an unseen crash. In memorable scenes of a desolate London, Jim walks from the hospital and slowly discovers he’s one of the few not to have caught a virus that causes “infecteds” to feast on human flesh.
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