Jeremy Renner & Idris Elba's Zombie Movie Is A Hulu Hit 18 Years Later

Published 8 hours ago• 5 minute read

the Russo brothers and their streaming overlords are yet to completely eradicate wonder and imagination from the film industry (though Joe Russo's vision of an A.I.-driven garbage future often seems as though it's fast-approaching). For the time being at least, there's still plenty of good stuff out there, and sometimes it finds its way onto the streaming charts, right alongside the dross.

If you take a look at Hulu's charts over the first half of 2025, we've seen some great stuff popping up in the rankings, from Chloe Fineman's critically acclaimed comedy to 2025's Best Picture winner "Anora." It's not just new stuff hitting the streaming charts, either. Often we'll see forgotten, overlooked, or generally older movies re-emerge as streamers either refresh their libraries or viewers prepare for a new franchise installment. The latter occurred when fans rewatched the "Final Destination" movies ahead of the release of "Final Destination Bloodlines" and sent previous entries in the horror franchise straight to the top of the HBO Max charts. Now, another horror saga is experiencing the same streaming-age effect.

It's been more than 20 years since 2002's "28 Days Later" debuted, introducing the world to the highly contagious Rage virus, which in the film decimated society by turning humanity into a horde of highly-aggressive feral ghouls. Aside from being a surprise critical and commercial hit, Danny Boyle's celebrated pandemic/zombie horror effort launched a zombie movie renaissance and featured one of Cillian Murphy's best early roles. As such, a sequel was all but guaranteed, and in 2007 "28 Weeks Later" arrived. Though it made slightly less than the original, and wasn't quite as beloved among critics, the sequel was still a success. Now, almost two decades later, we're finally getting a third entry in the franchise, and it seems fans are preparing for its arrival with a good old rewatch, allowing "28 Weeks Later" to claim a place on the Hulu charts which not only adds yet another solid movie to the list of 2025 Hulu charters, it prevents a movie like "The Electric State" from ranking, which is pretty much a win-win.

Jeremy Renner's Doyle is seen in closeup in 28 Weeks Later

20th Century Studios

Released in May 2007, "28 Weeks Later" was a standalone follow-up to the original film. Danny Boyle was replaced by director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Rowan Joffé, Enrique López Lavigne and Jesus Olmo. Cillian Murphy was also nowhere to be seen. Instead, the film stars Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Mackintosh Muggleton, Imogen Poots, and Idris Elba, which, considering what those actors went on to do with their careers post-"28 Weeks Later," is a pretty impressive cast.

The movie itself is set after the events of the first film and depicts a NATO effort to establish a London-based safe-zone. Refugees soon arrive in Britain to take advantage of the safe-zone and NATO's rebuilding efforts, but two young siblings manage to scupper the whole thing when they reintroduce the Rage Virus into the populace, prompting things to go south very quickly. By the end of "28 Weeks Later," the rage is very much reignited, setting the stage for another instalment that has taken almost 20 years to materialize.

Over on Hulu, subscribers are reliving this particular nightmare scenario ahead of "28 Years Later," which is set to drop on June 20, 2025. As streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol shows, "28 Weeks Later" is blowing up on Hulu, ever since Disney did the smart thing and added the movie to its catalogue on June 1, 2025. Debuting at number 2 on the movie chart on June 3, the film remained in the number two spot for two days, before falling to number seven as of June 5. But with a couple of weeks to go before the threequel arrives, "28 Weeks Later" could very well see another boost in the coming days.

Robert Carlyle's Don looks concerned as he stands inside in 28 Weeks Later

20th Century Studios

The latest "28 Weeks Later" trailer is a perfect example of how to market a movie. That, and the fact this film has been almost two-decades in the making, means anticipation is high for the third installment, which sadly won't feature Cillian Murphy after all, despite hopes that the original franchise star might return. As such, it's not a surprise to see Hulu viewers streaming "28 Weeks Later" in earnest. Even if the threequel wasn't imminent, the sequel would be a solid choice.

Making $64.2 million on a $15 million budget and garnering critical praise, the 2007 film was a success by any measure — though it isn't remembered as the seminal hit the original is. The movie currently bears a respectable 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune describing it as "swift, vicious, and grimly imaginative" and even going so far as to claim that it "exceeds its predecessor in every way." The New York Times' A.O. Scott was similarly impressed, writing, "'28 Weeks Later' is brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying. It is also bracingly smart, both in its ideas and in its techniques." Mark Rahner of the Seattle Times wasn't in agreement, however. The writer evidently found the movie's "social commentary" to be "as subtle as — well, a George Romero movie." Still, on the whole critics were quite taken with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's vision for the franchise, which is definitely worth a watch even if you're not necessarily planning on rushing out to see the third movie when it drops.

If you're wondering why the original film isn't charting, there's a complicated history there. For a long time the Cillian Murphy-led horror classic was impossible to watch, but was finally made available in December 2024 when it hit digital platforms. The movie can currently be seen for free on Pluto TV alongside the usual services such as Prime Video and Apple TV and is well worth a look if you've never seen it.

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