28 Years Later director reveals the very serious reason all the ‘hung’ zombies wore prosthetics

The next instalment will be 28 Inches Later


28 Years Later is finally here, and while everyone is pretty sold on the sequel, the commentary on Twitter is all centred around one apparently crucial detail: Zombies are supposedly very (very) hung.

The film, a direct continuation of the 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, was released last week to rave reviews. The Times called it “the most beautiful zombie film” of all time, and Metro dubbed it a “brutally moving” instalment to the franchise. But for every nuanced review, there came dozens of comments centred around undead junk. One zombie in particular, the Alpha Ralph Fiennes’ character nicknamed Samson, is said to be quite gifted downstairs.

One person said: “28 Years Later is a hauntingly beautiful, deeply affecting evolution of the franchise. There’s horror and dread, but also strangely stunning moments of beauty and a giant zombie dong. Well worth the wait.”

“28 Years Later was f*cking great and all but why was that alpha so damn hung omg just slinging that thing around chasin people,” another wrote.

“Zombie d*ck every 5 minutes on 28 years later,” someone else quipped.

Besides the apparent visual allure of having butt-naked zombies on the big screen, it turns out it created a bit of a problem for director Danny Boyle.

Why did the 28 Years Later zombies wear ‘hung’ prosthetics?

“I mean, if you’re recently infected, you’d have some clothes, but if you’ve been infected for a long time, the clothes would just disintegrate with the way that you behave,” Danny told PEOPLE at the premiere for 28 Years Later.

Logistically, the naked zombies made sense, but Danny was not aware of the Child Sex Offences Act when he hired 14-year-old Alfie Williams to play Spike, the son of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character Jamie.

“We never knew that going in, it was a nightmare,” he added. “Interestingly, because there was a 12-year-old boy on set, you’re not allowed for anybody to be naked, not really naked.”

To get around the issue, and after a chat with the intimacy coordinator on set, Danny found a workaround to get the hung zombies of his dreams in 29 Years Later.

He explained: “So it’s like, ‘Oh my God,’ so we had to make everybody prosthetic genitals.”

It’s not clear how many prosthetics were made for 28 Years Later, but the costume department sure did have their work cut out for them.

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Featured image credit: Sony

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