Ralph Fiennes has regularly earned acclaim throughout his entire career, with his work in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple being the latest project to score him rave reviews. Unfortunately, critics offering heaping helpings of praise doesn’t always relate to ticket sales, with Bone Temple only having secured $24.84 million at the domestic box office, making for a worldwide total of $56.6. This domestic total just barely pushes past his 1994 movie Quiz Show, which earned four Academy Award nominations and took in $24.78 domestically.
Even though Quiz Show scored four nominations, it failed to score any Oscars, despite sitting at a 97% positive score on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Making those nominations even more surprising is that Fiennes wasn’t recognized for his work, with the movie instead earning nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published. Instead, Forrest Gump earned Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, and Best Screenplay, while Ed Wood‘s Martin Landau won Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Quiz Show followed a game show contestant in the 1950s who earned fame and fortune, only for a scandal to ignite in which contestants claimed certain participants were being given the answers to the questions to make for a better TV show.
How Has Ralph Fiennes Never Won an Oscar?
Fiennes earned his breakout role in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in 1993 as the ruthless Nazi Amon Göth. His performance was so powerful that it earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, with Tommy Lee Jones instead winning for The Fugitive. Schindler’s List won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 1996, Fiennes scored another nomination, this time for Best Actor, thanks to his role in The English Patient. Much like with Schindler’s List, Fiennes didn’t win, though English Patient won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche.
It would be nearly two decades before Fiennes earned another Best Actor nomination, as he was recognized for the 2023 Conclave, with that movie only taking home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shockingly, Fiennes has also earned seven nominations from the Golden Globe Awards and secured no wins. He did, though, earn a BAFTA for his work in Schindler’s List.
How Will ‘Bone Temple’s Box Office Impact the Franchise?
The contemporary cinematic landscape often sees studios only moving forward with franchises when each installment takes in major hauls at the box office. In fact, some franchises that have built-in audiences have seen sequels scrapped and storylines never finished when interest from audiences drops.
In what is currently good news for 28 Years Later, both the previous film and Bone Temple were filmed back-to-back, allowing the studio to get the movies into theaters in relatively quick succession. Even with there being a nearly 20-year gap between installments, last year’s 28 Years Later was a big hit with critics, and based solely on the promising early reactions of Bone Temple, the next film in the franchise earned a green light.
The question audiences have now, though, is how underwhelming Bone Temple‘s box office haul has to be for Sony Pictures to delay or potentially even scrap their plans for the next chapter.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
4.5
/5
- Release Date
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January 16, 2026
- Runtime
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109 Minutes
- Director
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Nia DaCosta
- Producers
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Andrew Macdonald, Bernard Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, Peter Rice
- Franchise(s)
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28 Days Later
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Jack O’Connell
Jimmy Crystal
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
