After the trailer for “28 Years Later,” “28 Days Later” is finally available to stream again

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return after 22 years to make 28 Years Later, although the original 28 Days Later remains one of the strangest modern cinematic stories.

Boyle and Garland’s new 28 Years Later trailer (they didn’t make 28 Months Later) is stunning and will likely be another instant classic of the zombie genre. Even this short spot is one of the most disturbing trailers I’ve seen this year. It will be released on June 20, 2025.

But when it comes to 28 Days Later, a film you’ll probably want to see before its release, it’s long been impossible to do so legally in almost any format. 28 Days Later is not available for free, rent, or purchase on any streaming service. New Blu-Rays are not for sale. The only way to watch it is to purchase a used physical copy or pirate it. Fortunately, that will soon change.

According to Sony itself, 28 Days Later will soon be available digitally. There’s now a pretty bizarre way to announce this: there’s now a page where you can enter your information to be notified “when you can pre-order the film digitally.” So while it’s coming back, we don’t know when that will be. And you can…pre-order it? Bizarre. But at least it happens at some point. Apparently signing up also gives you access to marketing updates for Sony, so that’s pretty lame.

The disappearance of “28 Days Later” is an example of many people’s worst fears in the modern streaming age, that films, even incredible ones, can somehow fall through the cracks and disappear altogether. Admittedly, this is a particularly unusual case, but it certainly confirms some of these fears.

The reason for this is probably a mess of rights issues. Disney lost the rights to the film, but 28 Weeks Later was financed by Searchlight, which became a subsidiary of Disney after its Fox acquisition, so the film remained available. But the rights to 28 Days Later remained with Sony and they simply couldn’t get a deal with any streaming service to broadcast it. Why this is so has never been made clear, and the ability to “pre-order” the film’s digital release could mean simply making it available for digital viewing rather than turning to a streaming service like Netflix or Disney Plus. But we don’t know for sure.

This will no doubt be sometime before June, but I really wish Sony would come out and explain what exactly has been going on here for years, but they undoubtedly won’t. Hopefully it will stay online forever now.

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