Alex Garland pitched a 28 Years Later 'completely in Mandarin'
Alex Garland's original pitch for 28 Years Later had the film "completely in Mandarin" to give it a "punk" twist.
Alex Garland's original pitch for 28 Years Later had the film "completely in Mandarin".
The 55-year-old writer-and-director has teamed up with Danny Boyle for the third installment of the horror franchise, and he's admitted the screenplay he started working on following the COVID-19 pandemic was "completely and utterly generic", but with a "punk" twist.
Alex told Rolling Stone magazine: "Yeah, it was completely and utterly f****** generic.
"There’s always been something slightly punk about 28 Days Later…, which I think stems from my age, Danny’s age, and where we grew up.
"The idea was that a group of military commandos would break quarantine and try to get to the place where the virus had originated, in order to find a cure. When they got there, they found another group that had got there first, and who were trying to weaponise the virus.
"The punk element was that the commandos would be Chinese Special Forces, and the film would be completely in Mandarin and subtitled, and just sort of be f****** with people in various ways.”
The film would have seen major action sequences, including shootouts and mass attacks, which Alex could "think of a bunch of filmmakers who could have effectively picked it up and run with it.”
However, his concern the plot was predictable and not quite right was confirmed when he turned the script over to Danny.
Alex recalled: "Danny, in effect, said to me: ‘Alex, are you kidding?'
“He didn’t come out with it quite that bluntly. Or maybe he did. But he very nicely kept trying to make it work, suggesting ‘what if we did this, what if we did that?’ Finally, we both gave up on it."
However, the early idea had one advantage because it gave the pair a sense of freedom that allowed them to have a "totally blank slate" for the third film in the franchise.
Alex added: "But oddly enough, writing something so generic was the freeing element to all of our problems. It gave us permission to have a totally blank slate.
"And it coincided with me not wanting to direct anything for a bit. I was very much into the idea of writing something for somebody else."
