Sony’s ‘28 Years Later’ franchise is under threat — what it means for the movie industry 

“The Bone Temple” is crumbling at the box office but the question on the mind of studio execs is what that collapse says about Hollywood’s love affair with franchises?

The latest film in Sony’s “28 Years Later” franchise is the first big box office bomb of 2026. It opened to a disappointing $13 million haul over the MLK weekend — well below the $20-22 million it was expecting. It sank further in its second weekend earning less than $4 million, a brutal 71% dip. Globally, the Nia DaCosta-directed film has so far brought in $46 million against a reported $63 million budget, tracking well below the break-even threshold.

Not unlike the “28 Days” universe’s Rage Virus there’s a larger epidemic being exposed here: risk averse studios have fallen in love with long-term franchise plays — often shooting multiple installments at once (Sony shot “28 Years Later” and “The Bone Temple” simultaneously) — only to then realize that they can’t deliver. 

Ralph Fiennes in a scene from “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” AP

Franchises are nothing new, but the impact of streaming and then COVID on the theater-going experience placed an almost irrational faith in the ability of existing IP to perform. (I can’t help but recall the Shailene Woodley-fronted “Divergent” series which started out in theaters, was redeveloped into a TV movie, then as TV series, before ultimately being scrapped.)

It’s not just Sony. Take James Cameron’s “Avatar” series: “Fire and Ash.” While still a box office hit (nearly $1.4 billion globally), the third installment has performed significantly worse than the second epic, “The Way of Water.” And while Disney has already committed to a fourth and fifth “Avatar” installment slated for 2029 and 2031 respectively, Cameron himself has expressed doubts. He recently told Taiwan’s TVBS News that “the movie industry is depressed right now,” and, “‘Avatar 3’ cost a lot of money. We have to do well in order to continue. We need to figure out how to make ‘Avatar’ movies more inexpensively in order to continue.”

Or take Netflix. In 2021, the streamer shocked the industry by paying an astounding $469 million for the “Knives Out” franchise sequels “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.” The second film of the Rian Johnson-directed series was a runaway hit on the platform, but the most recent, which was available to subscribers in December, opened at a disappointing No. 7 in theaters, according to Screen Rant, over a long Thanksgiving weekend.

Marvel, of course, wrote the book on how to build a multi-billion dollar juggernaut turning existing IP into franchises until audience exhaustion started to set in with the 2023 releases of “The Marvels” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” (Another pet peeve of mine: All of those unresolved Marvel cameos! The Harry Styles tease in “Eternals?” Bret Goldstein in “Thor: Love and Thunder?” Charlize Theron in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?” What was the point? And where is the Mahershala Ali-led “Blade” we were promised back in 2019?)

Cillian Murphy, Nia DaCosta and Danny Boyle attend the World Premiere of “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.”  Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage

So where does that leave the “28 Years Later” franchise’s planned third film? Under a pile of rubble.

A source with knowledge of the situation tells Page Six Hollywood, “This did not turn out how they wanted it to. I don’t know how a third movie gets made. You can only justify it so much when, clearly, people just aren’t coming out to see it.” The source continued: “The first one did fine, but it didn’t make anything near what they wanted it to.”

FWIW, “Bone Temple” received excellent reviews with a 93% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and heaps of praise for stars Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell. It notched an impressive A- CinemaScore – a feat seldom achieved by horror films. “We have to acknowledge that it fell short of box office expectations, but the positive reviews and word of mouth underscore just how challenging edgy, hard R-rated genre films can be to predict in a commercial setting,” says Fandango’s Shawn Robbins.

Franchise gurus Danny Boyle and Alex Garland first shared their intent to revive the “28 Days” franchise with a new trilogy in 2024. Deadline reported last year that original star Cillian Murphy was in talks to return for the next movie, as teased with his appearance in the final moments of “The Bone Temple.”

Any remaining hope for the film could rest on how much faith the studio is willing to place in the allure of the Oscar winner’s return, a source adds. “I guess it just depends if they think that Cillian can bring audiences out.” 

It worked for “Oppenheimer.”