For more than two decades, Danny Boyle has been plagued by one question: What would happen after a zombie apocalypse?

The famed director's 2002 movie "28 Days Later" broke conventions of the zombie genre and helped launch a digital video moviemaking revolution in the early 2000s. But as years and then decades passed — and Boyle went on to earn a best director Oscar for "Slumdog Millionaire," do a Steve Jobs movie, and make a "Trainspotting" sequel — he could never crack a continuation of his original "28 Days."

Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland missed out on the sequel, 2007's "28 Weeks Later," because they had already committed to making the sci-fi thriller "Sunshine." And pitching their own continuation around Hollywood never got any traction. Maybe it would be one of those things that would never come to fruition.

It wasn't until the British Film Institute invited him to do a Q&A at a "28 Days Later" 20th anniversary screening in 2022 that Boyle realized just how much audiences appreciated the film.

"I showed up and it was a packed theater," Boyle told Business Insider during a recent trip to New York City. "I was shocked. You could feel the audience's energy watching it. I texted Alex after, and I told him there's still an appetite for this. So he then came up with an idea."

Garland's idea would become "28 Years Later," which opens in theaters June 20. The film focuses in on a small island community in England that's learned to survive in relative isolation 28 years after the country was ravaged by the Rage Virus. But when Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) venture to the mainland, they discover new mutations of the virus and survivors with their own fearsome methods for staying alive.

Though the "28 Years Later" cast is entirely new — and there are no glimpses of original "28 Days" star Cillian Murphy, despite the rumors — Boyle is just getting started. He's also a producer on a sequel set for release in January, "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple," which was shot by director Nia DaCosta ("Candyman") right after "28 Years" wrapped. And Boyle will return to direct a third movie, which will indeed star "28 Days Later" star Cillian Murphy. That is, if Sony will greenlight it.

So how did Boyle crack the code to continuing his zombie franchise? His trick is to think limited, not expansive. Though he has big aspirations for a trilogy, it all came about by keeping "28 Years Later" as grounded as possible.

"I love limitations, because I can bash against it and that gives energy and inventiveness," Boyle said with a wide smile. "So the third movie is in many ways an original film."

For the latest edition of Business Insider's Director's Chair series, Boyle discusses returning to the zombie genre, how he used Cillian Murphy as leverage to pursue his other creative ideas, and if he'd ever take on another James Bond movie.

Business Insider: Take me back to that "28 Days Later" 20th anniversary BFI screening. Where was your head at then about doing a third movie?

Danny Boyle: By that point, Alex had developed one script, which we decided not to do: weaponizing the virus, a traditional type of sequel. It was a good script, but we just didn't get any traction. After the BFI screening, he came up with the idea of confining the story to an island, and that was a really good decision.

How much of the COVID pandemic influenced how you wanted the characters to navigate the Rage Virus 28 years later?

It would be that people would become accustomed. You can take risks and know when the back off them. There's a kid in this movie who has no knowledge of the virus — it has been passed on to him; he's never seen any of it. This is his first trip to the mainland. He's heard stories.

You can see that the kids draw pictures of the stories they've been told. They have mythologized the virus. So we talked about all that. And then we delve into the culture before the apocalypse, and it's distorted. How reliable is it? We don't know. But that's an element that goes into the second film, "The Bone Temple."

The visuals have always been a hallmark of your filmography, but especially this franchise. "28 Days Later" ushered digital cameras into the mainstream. Now with this movie, you're shooting with iPhones. It's been done a lot on the indie side with filmmakers like Sean Baker and Steven Soderbergh, but I believe this is the first time camera phones have been used at the studio level. Why did you want to do that?

I felt an obligation to take the spirit of the first movie, but be aware that the technology has moved on so much. Phones now shoot at 4K, which is what a lot of cameras shoot at anyway. And the advantage of using the phones is we were able to be very lightweight.

Also, some of the locations we were shooting hadn't been disturbed for many years. It's an area of England called Northumberland, its sister county is Yorkshire, which is agriculture and manicured. In order to go there with a crew, you have to be light, so having iPhone cameras was good for that. We used a lot of drones, which had different camera lenses; we used a specific Panasonic camera for the night vision footage.

But the iPhone gave us a light touch and allowed us to use these rigs, which I'd been trying to use for a while. It's a poor man's bullet time. But you don't have to go to it, you can carry it. 

So now, instead of laying down dolly track and having all this gear in these very preserved locations, all you need to retrace are footsteps. 

That's right. 

How did you sell Sony on all of this?

[Laughs.] Um. I can't remember. 

Come on.

I will do and say anything to get the film made. There is a terrible side to directors where you will promise [studios] stuff and you don't mean it. They are nervous. They're a corporation. And you have to massage the vision. 

So what was the promise you gave that you weren't going to fulfill?

Cillian Murphy. 

What better promise could you make? That's quite a deflection of any technical concerns; they soon forget. Yeah, we nakedly used that to get our own way. But Sony knew what they were inheriting.

Did Nia DaCosta shoot "The Bone Temple" right after you wrapped on "28 Years"?

Pretty much. She visited the "28 Years" set a couple of times, but yeah, she was prepping her own film, she had her own cinematographer, and though she inherited the sets and some of the characters, she also had her own cast for a substantial part of it.

And she gets a bit of Cillian at the end. All I can say is you have to wait for Cillian, but hopefully he will help us get the third film financed. 

So where are things with the third movie?

We still need the money. I mean, we'll see how we do with "28 Years Later." It's so close to release that nobody wants to say anything; they just don't know what it's going to do. And I respect that. It's a lot of money, so we'll see. 

If there is a third movie, would you want to direct it?

Oh, yes. That's the idea. 

You famously walked off the last James Bond movie. Would you ever give Bond another try now that the regime has changed and Amazon is fully controlling it?

That ship has sailed. The thing I regret about that is the script was really good. John Hodge is a wonderful writer, and I don't think they appreciated how good that script was, and because they didn't, we moved on, and that's the way it should be. Whatever happens with Bond going forward now is what it will be. 

As someone who has done a Beatles movie with "Yesterday," what's your take on Sony's ambitious plan for four Beatles movies?

[Sony chairman] Tom Rothman — who I fight with a lot, and who I love very dearly — I do tip my hat to him, because that is backing a visionary filmmaker in Sam Mendes with a hard, big investment. That's a lot of vision to say, here ya go, there's four films. And they are all going to get released around the same time. 

All in one month! Just from the perspective of a director, would that scare you?

Sam clearly has an appetite to handle it all. I don't know what his vision is, but he's got terrific actors. I worked with Harris Dickinson, who is a wonderful actor, so he's got himself a very special cast. 90% of anything is casting; if you get it right, you're almost there. So I admire it. 

Now, one of the things we found, and they will have this issue, is that people don't know The Beatles' music. We just did a workshop on "Yesterday" and its long-term plans — like, should there be a stage production one day? We did a workshop with a bunch of actors, and lots of them just didn't know the songs. They are in their 20s or 30s, so why would they? They all can recite from memory something from Taylor Swift or Harry Styles, but The Beatles? So, we'll see.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

"28 Years Later" opens in theaters June 20.

• Rian Johnson's "Poker Face" returns for season 2 on Peacock with Natasha Lyonne solving mysteries.
• Johnson explained to Business Insider how he recruits a star-studded guest cast each season.
• Johnson plans to take on an original movie after the release of Netflix's "Wake Up Dead Man."

When it comes to murder, Rian Johnson knows what elements make up the perfect crime.

The writer-director has spent the last six years immersed in the whodunit genre, surrounding Daniel Craig's Southern dandy detective Benoit Blanc with a cast of quirky suspects in two "Knives Out" movies (a third is out this fall), and refining the procedural format for streaming with Peacock's "Poker Face" starring Natasha Lyonne.

"The murder mystery genre has served me well," Johnson told Business Insider with a giggle in the days leading up to the season two premiere of "Poker Face" on Thursday.

The series, which stars Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a mystery-solving former casino worker on the run from the mob, uses the case-of-the-week format to feature all manner of zany scenarios acted out by a star-studded cast of guest stars. This season, Charlie must do everything from work as an extra on a B-movie set at a mortuary run by Giancarlo Esposito to find the killer among quadruplets all played by Cynthia Erivo.

The series' familiar procedural format helps keep the show grounded, so Johnson can encourage the "Poker Face" writers to come up with outlandish scenarios for each episode.

"To me, having a show like this, it would be sad if you just cranked out a version of the same thing every time," Johnson said. "It's an engine to drive batshit crazy ideas that you might not get made otherwise. That, to me, is the fun part."

Johnson knows the value in keeping things creatively interesting. That's why he plans to take a break from the whodunit genre and start a new project after his latest "Knives Out " installment "Wake Up Dead Man" hits Netflix this fall.

"It's a completely different thing," Johnson told BI of his next idea. (And no, it's not a return to "Star Wars.") "It's a little scary, but in a fun way."

Below, Business Insider spoke with Johnson about turning crazy ideas into "Poker Face" episodes, casting actors via a group chat, and why he hopes "Wake Up Dead Man" gets played in as many movie theaters as possible — despite Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos' calling movie theaters "outdated."

Business Insider: Each "Poker Face" episode this season feels like a mini movie. While watching, I wondered if there's an archivist on the show who has encyclopedic knowledge of everything that's happened, simply just to make sure not to repeat a bit or the way someone was murdered.

Rian Johnson: Yeah, it's me [laughs]. In terms of what we've done in the previous season, I mean, if you talk to someone who has done "Law and Order" where they are on their 89th season and 300 episodes, they would laugh at us. But we have some of the writers' room assistants do research. So that is one element of it.

What does a proposed "Poker Face" story need for you to consider it for an episode?

We definitely have a blue sky day where people just pitch, "What about a baseball episode?" and others, and that's really fun because you also get to know the writers in the room, because everyone is pitching their own pet ideas. And then the reality is you pick a horse at some point and say, "Okay, let's develop this thing," and then the real work happens, which is hashing out the show and the structure.

Charlie is not a cop; it's not her job to do these things. By necessity, you have to find a way in for her with every episode. And that means you have to develop a relationship, you have to have an emotional investment. With "Poker Face," it's something that you actually really need to make the episode tick. So finding ways to do that every week without it feeling like it's repeating itself, finding different relationship dynamics, finding different ways in — the connection Charlie has with the killer or the person killed — that ends up being one of the biggest challenges of the writing. 

A perfect example is the first episode of season two, which you directed. In it, Charlie meets Cynthia Erivo's character while working at an apple orchard. Was that something not used in the last season?

No, the orchard setting was fresh. I think part of it came from we were shooting in New York, and we were like, "What's around there? Oh, an apple orchard. That will be ideal!" But that's also a fun element of it. It harkens back to the "Columbo" thing or more "Quantum Leap," every episode zooming into a microcosm fishbowl of a world. Episode 1 came from the notion of all these false starts. We could have had a "Poker Face" episode set in a haunted house hayride or a parking garage, but those pesky gunmen keep chasing Charlie.

Are you personally involved in selecting the guest stars?

Yeah. The casting process for the main guest stars is a text thread with me, Natasha, Tony Tost, the showrunner, and our casting directors. Sometimes it's just me and Natasha bouncing back and forth ideas of friends that we want to text. So it's a very fun, personal, and chaotic process because we're casting the show week to week. 

So it's a lot of figuring out if schedules are going to fit.

But there's also an element that's also, "I was out the other night at dinner and I ran into so and so. Do you think they'd want to be in this episode that starts shooting on Monday?" There's a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants element to it, which is fun and terrifying. It's amazing to get to the end of the season after that process and look back and see the roster that we've gotten. 

Has an actor you've gone out to for the show ever declined because they're holding out for a role in a "Knives Out" movie?

[Laughs] Not to my knowledge. If that has happened, they have not given that reason to me. But also being in one doesn't preclude you from being in the other. And these are very different processes casting both. We cast as we're shooting with "Poker Face." And we started shooting that halfway into the "Wake Up Dead Man" shoot. 

So someone you cast in a "Knives Out" movie could show up in a "Poker Face" episode, and vice versa?

Absolutely. Most of the people in this season I would cast in a heartbeat in a "Knives Out" movie. 

After "Wake Up Dead Man," have you thought about what you'll do next?

Actually, I have a whole movie in my head that I just have to write, which makes it sound easy, but it won't be. I'm hoping to take the summer and dig into that. It is not a Benoit Blanc movie, it's not a murder mystery, it's a very different genre. It's an original. So, I'm hoping to dive into that.

So, not taking a trip back to a galaxy far, far away?

Not for this next one. 

Recently, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos spoke at the Time100 Summit and said this of the state of theatrical releases: "Folks grew up thinking, 'I want to make movies on a gigantic screen, and have strangers watch them, and play in the theater for two months, and people cry, and sold-out shows.' It just doesn't happen anymore. It's an outdated concept." Do you agree with him?

Obviously I don't, because I love movies. I love going to see movies. But, also, I have a feeling talking to Ted, it would be a different thing than one quote taken and kind of tossed at me in this context. So I don't want to phrase this as I'm having a proxy discussion with Ted right here.

But, I will say, disconnected from that, I think theatrical is not going anywhere. With the success of Ryan [Coogler]'s movie, "Sinners," and the "Minecraft" movie, I think we've seen if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it. That experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important. It's something that I love and I want more of in the world. 

I'm sure you've had discussions with Ted yourself about theatrical within the Netflix bubble. Daniel Craig has gone on record saying it saddened him how "Glass Onion" was released in so few theaters. Do you hope "Wake Up Dead Man" will be shown on more screens?

We'll see. We're going to push for all we can get. I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible. I love Ted, I love working with Netflix. They have been absolutely wonderful partners. We're going to push for everything we can get in terms of theatrical with it because I want as many people as possible to see it in that form. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The first three episodes of "Poker Face" are now streaming on Peacock, with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays.

• Steven Soderbergh's movie "Black Bag" underperformed, earning $37 million on a $44 million budget.
• Soderbergh, who's known for mid-budget dramas, is frustrated by the film's lackluster reception.
• He is hesitant to make epic films again, citing the need for genuine inspiration.

Following the lackluster box office performance of his latest mid-budget spy thriller, "Black Bag," Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is contemplating his next move.

The director behind acclaimed films like "Traffic," "Erin Brockovich," "Out of Sight," and the "Ocean's Eleven" franchise has made nearly every type of movie imaginable, but he's always felt most comfortable doing a modestly budgeted drama. But the performance of "Black Bag," which brought in $37 million on a $44 million budget, has the filmmaker reconsidering how he fits into today's moviemaking landscape.

"The people we needed to come out didn't come out," Soderbergh told Business Insider of the "Black Bag" box office numbers. "And unfortunately, it's impossible to really know why."

"My concern is that the rest of the industry looks at that result and just goes, 'This is why we don't make movies in that budget range for that audience, because they don't show up,'" he continued. "And that's unfortunate, because that's the kind of movie I've made my whole career. That middle ground, which we all don't want to admit is disappearing, seems to be really disappearing."

The fact that a sexy spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Pierce Brosnan that's Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes couldn't pull in an audience is particularly confounding to Soderbergh.

"I mean, it's the best-reviewed movie I've ever made in my career, and we've got six beautiful people in it, and they all did every piece of publicity that we asked them to do, and this is the result," he said. "So it's frustrating."

Asked if he would ever return to making epic movies like 2008's "Che," his two-film biopic starring Benicio del Toro as the revolutionary Che Guevara, Soderbergh wasn't against it, but he had one caveat.

"It's really got to be something that deserves that kind of treatment and doesn't feel like Oscar bait," he said.

Soderbergh said he currently has nothing in the works that he would characterize as an epic and explained why.

"It does require an aspect of the grandiosity gene; you've got to think about yourself a certain way to want to go out and do those things. That is not my default mode," he said. "I have to work myself up to that because I don't have that kind of sense of my place."

Still, he enjoys making epic films when it's the right move. It even led to the creation of one of his most beloved television series.

"If I hadn't made 'Che,' I don't think I would have made 'The Knick,'" which I think is the last epic thing that I've done," Soderbergh said of his acclaimed 2014 Cinemax series starring Clive Owen as a surgeon pushing the boundaries of medicine in 1900s New York.

"'Che' was good for me in that sense. But knowing what goes into that, it has got to be something that I feel really electrified by, and those are just hard to come by," he continued. "Then you've got to cast Timothée Chalamet."

"Black Bag" will be available to stream on Peacock starting May 2.