’28 Days Later’ Director Admits Using AI to Make His New Film

After 2019’sYesterday, a romantic comedy about a man in an alternate universe without the Beatles, anticipation for Danny Boyle‘s next project ran high. Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later (2025) marked a near-perfect return to form for the 28 Days Later universe. Nina DaCosta took the directing reins for the equally successful 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, but Boyle will be returning to finish the trilogy.

However, before we return to a dystopian Britain filled with rage-infected zombies, Boyle’s latest movie tackles an even bigger horror — tabloid journalism. Adapted from James Graham’s stage play of the same name,Ink (2026) focuses on the launch of The Sun newspaper. Jack O’Connell (Sinners) stars as Larry Lamb, who is brought on by Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) as the paper’s editor, and at the Venice Film Festival, Ink premiered to rave reviews. Boyle is often quite open about his filmmaking process, and this film is proving no different, as Boyle has revealed that he used generative AI in Ink.

In a Vanity Fair video interview, the Trainspotting director confirmed that generative AI was used in a brief segment of the film. “There’s about 30 seconds of it in our movie where we animate a couple of old photographs,” Boyle explained. “Oh, and there’s some mice. It’s very good for animals, and we had some mice that run around The Sun newsroom.”

Boyle is very apprehensive about using real animals, and for good reason, too, as he’d previously gotten in trouble with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for using real chimpanzees in the opening of 28 Days Later (2002). As for what he thinks of AI in film as a whole, Boyle said that his opinion doesn’t really matter; instead, it “matters what 20-year-olds think about it.”

“My opinion of it is that it’s a very useful tool in many ways, provided you use it respectfully and provided you pay actors if you’re going to replace them with some kind of AI embodiment.”

According to Deadline, several social media users expressed their belief that AI was used to reanimate old photographs of the notorious Kray Twins and Margaret Thatcher, and while Boyle didn’t confirm which pictures had received the treatment, his statement appears to add some legitimacy to those allegations.Other directors have similarly been openabout their use of AI, as acclaimed director Martin Scorsese previously endorsed it for storyboarding, and is a partner in the AI startup Black Forest Labs, which specializes in image generation. Meanwhile, Steven Soderbergh also revealed that he’d dabbled in AI while making his documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview (2026).