Nia DaCosta on 28 Years Later: Why Hollywood’s Boldest Franchise Director Refuses to Copy Anyone
28 Years Later – directed by Nia DaCosta
Nia DaCosta and 28 Years Later: How a Reluctant Auteur Found Her Voice in Franchise Filmmaking
By Staff Writer |
In a film industry obsessed with “shared universes” and intellectual property, Nia DaCosta has quietly become one of Hollywood’s most intriguing franchise directors. At 36, she’s gone from indie drama to a Marvel tentpole to rebooting horror royalty—and now, with 28 Years Later, she’s stepping into a universe built by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland while pointedly refusing to imitate them.
In a recent CNN interview ahead of the film’s release, DaCosta put it plainly:
“I don’t want to make a Danny Boyle movie. I’d rather watch one.”
That line has ricocheted around Film Twitter and Letterboxd precisely because it captures a tension many younger filmmakers feel: how do you honor a beloved franchise without becoming a cover band for someone else’s greatest hits?
From Dobbs Ferry to the Rage Virus: Nia DaCosta’s Unlikely Path
DaCosta’s story has already acquired a kind of modern filmmaker mythology. Growing up in New York, she spent her senior year of high school effectively traveling the world without ever leaving the common room of her boarding school in Dobbs Ferry. Films were her passport—an early crash course in global cinema that would eventually take her to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and into the orbit of directors like Martin Scorsese, whom she has often cited as an influence.
Her 2018 feature debut Little Woods was a grounded, near-thriller about healthcare, economic precarity and sisterhood in North Dakota oil country. It earned critical praise and marked her as a writer-director unwilling to separate politics from character.
Hollywood came calling quickly. DaCosta was tapped to write and direct the 2021 Candyman, a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 horror classic. Then came The Marvels (2023), which made her the youngest filmmaker ever to direct a Marvel Studios film—a fact the industry trumpeted endlessly even as the film’s box office became fodder for discourse about “superhero fatigue.”
Why 28 Years Later Matters: Horror, Legacy and Expectations
The original 28 Days Later (2002) wasn’t just a zombie movie; it helped redefine 21st-century horror. Danny Boyle’s jittery digital cinematography, Alex Garland’s script and that early-2000s post‑9/11 unease fused into something that felt feral and political. 28 Weeks Later (2007) sharpened the franchise’s reputation for bleak, almost nihilistic spectacle.
By the time 28 Years Later went into development, the genre landscape had shifted. We’ve had The Walking Dead empire, Train to Busan, World War Z, and a renaissance of elevated horror from Get Out to Hereditary. The risk isn’t just that another sequel might feel redundant—it’s that it might feel artistically unnecessary.
That’s precisely why DaCosta’s involvement is interesting. Her work on Candyman showed she could engage with horror icons and socio-political commentary at the same time. Her Marvel experience, meanwhile, gave her the skill set to juggle studio notes, VFX pipelines and sprawling continuity without completely losing her voice.
“I’d Rather Watch One”: What DaCosta Really Means by Not Copying Danny Boyle
The viral quote about Boyle is easy to misread as snark; in context, it’s closer to artistic self-preservation. DaCosta’s point isn’t that she’s above homage, but that making a film in someone else’s exact voice is a dead end, both creatively and professionally.
“If you spend your whole time trying to live up to someone else’s movie, you’ve already lost,” she tells CNN. “The audience can just go home and watch 28 Days Later again. I can’t out‑Danny‑Boyle Danny Boyle.”
There’s a generational subtext here. Directors who came up in the 1990s and early 2000s—Boyle, Fincher, Tarantino—often built their reputations on highly recognizable visual signatures. DaCosta’s cohort is inheriting their franchises rather than building new ones from scratch. The move is less about auteur ego and more about survival: bring your own perspective or get flattened by the machine.
DaCosta’s Visual and Thematic Signature: What She Brings to 28 Years Later
Even when operating inside huge IP, DaCosta’s films share a few consistent obsessions:
- Intimacy amidst spectacle: In both Little Woods and The Marvels, the camera keeps drifting back to small, human gestures—sisters sharing a cigarette, heroes decompressing between battles.
- Systems that quietly crush people: Whether it’s the healthcare system, racist urban development or intergalactic bureaucracy, DaCosta is drawn to characters negotiating faceless institutions.
- Haunted spaces: From the Cabrini-Green apartments in Candyman to the cosmic ruins of Saber space station, she likes locations that feel emotionally charged, not just visually cool.
Applied to 28 Years Later, that suggests a film less interested in zombie‑attack set pieces for their own sake and more focused on who’s left decades after everything fell apart. The time jump in the title isn’t just a gimmick; it gives DaCosta room to explore generational trauma—how survivors, and the children of survivors, build lives in a world built on catastrophe.
Navigating the Franchise Machine: Lessons from The Marvels and Candyman
DaCosta’s career so far is also a case study in the politics of attribution. When Candyman was announced with Jordan Peele as producer and co‑writer, many headlines framed the film as “Jordan Peele’s Candyman” even though DaCosta was the director. With The Marvels, discourse veered in the opposite direction—she found herself absorbing online frustration over Marvel’s broader creative fatigue.
CNN’s conversation with her gestures toward a filmmaker who understands both the opportunity and the trap:
“You get access to these incredible toys, but you’re also dealing with layers of expectation—from fans, from studios, from the legacy of the original. You have to decide what part of yourself you’re willing to lose and what part you’re not.”
In this light, 28 Years Later looks like a kind of course‑correction. It’s a major studio horror film with built‑in name recognition, but it’s not as tightly welded to a decade‑long cinematic universe as a Marvel title. There’s brand equity, yes, but also more breathing room.
Representation, Responsibility and the Weight of Being “First”
The discourse around DaCosta often foregrounds her identity: a young Black woman at the helm of major genre projects traditionally dominated by white male directors. That representation matters—especially in horror and sci‑fi, genres that have long used metaphor to talk about race, class and power while sidelining creators of color.
But there’s a risk in treating that fact as the whole story. DaCosta’s CNN interview gently pushes back against the idea that she should be grateful for any big‑budget opportunity, no matter how constrained:
“I love genre. I love horror. I love big, weird swings. I don’t just want the ‘first Black woman to…’ headline. I want to make movies that you’d want to talk about even if you had no idea who directed them.”
That ambition dovetails with a broader shift in industry thinking. Post‑2020, Hollywood made a flurry of diversity pledges; by 2025, the conversation has turned to longevity and influence. Who gets to stick around long enough to shape entire genres, not just headline one “historic” hiring announcement?
Strengths and Weaknesses: A Fair Look at DaCosta’s Track Record
It’s tempting to talk about DaCosta in purely celebratory terms, but her filmography so far is more interesting—and more uneven—than simple hype allows.
What’s working
- Character‑first genre: Even in mixed‑reviewed projects, critics consistently praise her instinct for performance and emotional specificity.
- Political clarity: She handles themes of race, class and power without grinding the story to a halt for a lecture.
- Formal curiosity: From mirrored compositions in Candyman to playful spatial geography in The Marvels, she clearly likes experimenting with camera and blocking.
Where it’s complicated
- Tone management at scale: The Marvels often felt like three different movies fighting for space—a not‑uncommon Marvel problem, but one that inevitably lands at the director’s feet.
- Third‑act crunch: Both Candyman and The Marvels have finales that feel compressed, as if the emotional arcs and the studio‑mandated spectacle never fully sync up.
The gamble with 28 Years Later is that her strengths—mood, character, thematic ambition—will have a cleaner runway. The franchise’s DNA is bleak and political; no one’s expecting quippy one‑liners and cheerful fan service.
Where 28 Years Later Fits: A Quick DaCosta Filmography Snapshot
As 28 Years Later rolls out, DaCosta’s major work to date looks like this:
- Little Woods (2018) – Intimate, politically sharp, and still her most cohesive film.
- Candyman (2021) – Ambitious and visually striking, especially when it leans into shadow puppetry and urban folklore.
- The Marvels (2023) – Messy but intermittently delightful; works best when it plays like a hang‑out movie with superpowers.
- 28 Years Later (2026) – Poised to be the litmus test for whether she can synthesize everything she’s learned into a signature, large‑scale horror film.
First Look: The 28 Years Later Trailer and What It Teases
The official trailer leans hard into dread over jump scares: long shots of eerily quiet cityscapes, flashes of rage‑infected chaos, and fragments of intimate conversations about what it means to rebuild after decades of fear. Visually, it splits the difference between Boyle’s grungy digital grime and a sleeker, more composed modern horror look.
Without giving away plot specifics, a few elements stand out:
- Generational tension between those who remember the original outbreak and those who grew up in its shadow.
- Hints of new political structures born from permanent emergency rule.
- Moments of quiet tenderness that recall Little Woods more than zombie spectacle.
Why Nia DaCosta’s Refusal to Imitate Matters
DaCosta’s line about not wanting to make a Danny Boyle movie resonates because it cuts against a certain franchise logic. Studios often hire younger directors to replicate the tone of beloved originals at scale. DaCosta is effectively arguing for a different compact: keep the world, keep the core idea, but let the director be themselves.
Whether 28 Years Later lands as a horror classic, a fascinating misfire or something in between, it represents a test case for how much freedom studios are really willing to grant the filmmakers they task with reviving dormant IP. For DaCosta, it’s also a chance to step out from the shadow of “historic firsts” and contested blockbusters and simply make a Nia DaCosta movie—one that just happens to feature the rage virus.
If nothing else, her stance is a reminder that the healthiest version of franchise filmmaking isn’t about directors learning to mimic their predecessors; it’s about audiences being open to the idea that a familiar world can feel different in someone else’s hands.
For more on Nia DaCosta’s work and the 28 franchise, visit CNN Entertainment and the film’s page on IMDb.
