The cameras on smartphones have improved to such an extent that you’re no longer sacrificing the quality of the picture as much as you once were when you decide to shoot a movie on an iPhone. Even so, it’s almost shocking to consider a big-budget movie being filmed on a smartphone, but that’s exactly what director Danny Boyle decided to do for 28 Years Later, the sequel to his 2002 hit 28 Days Later.
According to reporting in Wired, the film was shot on a series of tricked out iPhone 15s. The movie stars Jodie Comer, Ralph Fienees, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and is expected to hit theaters in June of 2025.
In a way, the choice to film the movie on iPhones is a full-circle moment for Boyle, who shot the original film on cutting-edge digital cameras back in 2002. The grainy look of that original film was part of the gritty realism that helped it become a classic that is still admired to this day.
Production on 28 Years Later wrapped in late August, and the production had been keeping under wraps the fact that it was shot using iPhones. In fact, they went so far as to make the crew sign NDAs so that they wouldn’t disclose that particular piece of information.
28 Years Later is not the first film to be shot using an iPhone, but up until now, most such films have been made on a smaller scale. Sean Baker’s Tangerine was shot that way all the way back in 2015, and Steven Soderbergh has also used the cameras for some of his smaller films. Thus far, though, 28 Years Later is by far the largest scale production to be shot with phone cameras.
