Where Can You Watch 28 Days Later? Christopher Nolan’s Warning Has Sadly Come True After ‘28 Years Later’ Trailer (2025)

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SUMMARY

• Danny Boyle's upcoming zombie threequel 28 Years Later recently released its first trailer and promised a tense survival thriller.
• The film is the third in the franchise, which began with Boyle's 28 Days Later, which starred Cillian Murphy in the lead role.
• While it is regarded as a cult classic, 28 Days Later seems to be unavailable on streaming and its physical copies seem to have run out of print.

The Danny Boyle directorial 28 Days Later is all set to get a threequel after fifteen years with the upcoming film 28 Years Later. The trailer of the threequel was released recently and showed Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and a possible cameo from Cillian Murphy, who headlined the original film.

While the threequel gears up for release, many fans have noticed that the original film 28 Days Later is not available for streaming anywhere nor are there any physical copies left. The film was distributed by Searchlight Pictures, which was bought by Disney as part of its acquisition of Fox Studios but was reportedly removed from sites like Hulu and Disney+.

28 Days Later Is Unavailable On Streaming And The DVDs Are Out Of Print

Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later revived the zombie genre and led to multiple films and shows like Zombieland, Dawn of the Dead (2007), The Walking Dead, and more. The film starred Cillian Murphy and its gritty aesthetic was greatly appreciated by fans and critics at the time. It spawned a sequel 28 Weeks Later and Boyle returned to direct the upcoming 28 Years Later.

While the second film is available to stream and can also be bought on demand, the original seems to be completely off the radar. In 2022, fans noticed that the cult classic was no longer available on streaming and the physical copies of the film were also out of print, with many customers receiving a copy of 28 Weeks Later instead (via Reddit).

According to MovieWeb, the film was independently produced by Andrew Macdonald and retained the rights of the film even though it was distributed by 20th Century Fox’s Searchlight Pictures. While the studio produced and released the sequel, they reportedly did not have rights for 28 Days Later. Macdonald reportedly sold the rights to Sony in order to produce 28 Years Later.

The lack of rights from Fox meant that they did not have streaming rights and after its acquisition by Disney, the film was not available on their streaming sites. However, as28 Years Later gears up for release in June 2025, Sony Pictures may be releasing the original on digital soon.

The X profile, Culture Crave, confirmed that the film would be released by Sony on digital though a date is yet to be announced officially. With the third film’s trailer being received well, capitalizing on the excitement is a good decision and Sony would definitely make fans happy with this move.

28 Days Later’s Situation Stresses On The Importance Of Owning Physical Media

The streaming business has boomed in the past few years, with the abundance of platforms slowly heading into the business models of cable. However, as the subscriber bases of these platforms grow, they seem to be thinning down their content libraries with some platforms even pulling down originals from their sites (via CNBC).

With the streaming business being so volatile, the need for owning physical media like DVDs and Blu-Ray versions of films has never been more important. Christopher Nolan, who has long been a proponent of theatrical experiences over streaming, warned about this exact scenario where a film’s absence on a streaming platform leads to its erasure (via Variety),

There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go.

Films like 28 Days Later are cult classics that deserve to be immortalized in some way and physical copies like DVDs, Blu-Rays, and more have always been the right way to preserve these classics.