I’m still amazed that director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have reassembled to deliver a new tale of terror to the 2025 movie schedule in 28 Years Later. The occasion has left me also thinking about 28 Days Later a lot, a film that would eventually become known as Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy’s star-making performance.
But while the Oppenheimer lead has always been pitch perfect in the role of Jim, there’s a long existing list of names that have been rumored to be up for the part back in the day. And when I say names, I truly mean “names,” like Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling and frequent Boyle collaborator Ewan McGregor.
When the opportunity to watch the first 28 minutes of 28 Years Later was paired with an in-person interview with its intrepid director, I had to try and weed out fact from fiction, which saw all three names debunked in the process. However, that’s when Danny Boyle gave CinemaBlend two names I never expected to be in the mix:
I'll tell you who did audition for Jim. … Tom Hardy and Orlando Bloom, because they'd all finished either drama school or Black Hawk Down. … We didn't have very much money, we thought ‘We'll never be able to afford a bigger actor.’ And we wanted newbies who just didn't know which way it would break with them.
So the trio of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling and Ewan McGregor were never going to even make the list for 28 Days Later’s casting. With that being said, I’m very surprised that Tom Hardy and Orlando Bloom hadn’t been reported more often - especially at that point in their careers.
Although coincidentally enough, McGregor was in Black Hawk Down himself, as well as entrenched in the Star Wars prequel trilogy at the time. Likewise, by the time Danny Boyle’s film was making the rounds in its initial 2002 release in the UK, Hardy and Bloom were going head to head at the box office thanks to their respective roles in Star Trek: Nemesis and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Honestly, either man would have been a distraction to the tense, harrowing journey 28 Days Later took, as audiences would know they’d survive the ride. The whole point of the third act is that by time Jim’s on his rampage through Major West’s estate, you’re supposed to wonder if he’s an Infected at that point.
While we now know that wasn’t the case, and with Cillian Murphy set to return for 28 Years Later’s sequel The Bone Temple, that point tends to get a bit lost. However, Danny Boyle’s perspective seemed to see him pick between two finalists, with the Christopher Nolan vet winning out in the end. At least, that’s what it sounded like when the 28 Years Later mastermind shared this with CinemaBlend:
And I remember seeing [them], and we saw Cillian, and I remember thinking, ‘Whoa, he'll have an amazing career.’ I remember thinking that. I was right. I remember thinking that about Orlando Bloom, I thought ‘He'll do all right. ‘
The rest, as they say, is history. 2003’s US release lit a fuse that saw both Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris both launch into higher profile roles, and Danny Boyle and Alex Garland being heralded as the men who reanimated the zombie (and zombie-adjacent) subgenre.
Seeing as Stephen King bought out showings of 28 Days Later just so he could give them out to spread the word, that was clearly the right choice. And as Danny Boyle himself suggested, Orlando Bloom and Tom Hardy did “do alright” in the end. Let’s hope that 28 Years Later renews its franchise’s King Seal of Approval, when it opens in theaters on June 20th.
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