28 Years Later was Filmed on an iPhone

28 Years Later, the next installment in filmmaker Danny Boyle’s popular zombie franchise, is the biggest movie to date — by a long shot — to primarily be shot on an iPhone.

The Big Picture: Apple has touted that its smartphone cameras are the most powerful ones the average person can buy. By getting the greenlight to be used in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, iPhones may have truly reached the status of being a movie studio in your pocket.

Behind the Scenes: Sony Pictures’ $75 million-budgeted 28 Years Later boasts returning Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle… using a camera most of us have in our pocket.

• Wired confirmed that the film was shot using an iPhone 15 Pro Max as its main camera, which was outfitted with an aluminum cage that allows for different lenses to be attached to the phone — all of which the production tried to keep quiet with NDAs.
• Part of the reason is that the iPhone 15 is the first of the devices that can shoot 4K “log” files, which, like typical pro cinema cameras, have a lot of flexibility to be edited in post-production.
• Additionally, the production put “action cams” on farm animals in what we’re sure will be the most chaotic shots imaginable. (They’re dubbed “GoatPros.” Genius.)

Closing Credits: 28 Years Later isn’t the first movie to be shot on an iPhone — indies like Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane did so years ago. But by leveling up to a Hollywood studio film, don’t be surprised if Apple starts to market iPhones as an essential tool for the next generation of filmmakers… and maybe require them for some AppleTV+ productions.

Go Deeper: Boyle’s zombie franchise has always experimented with cameras — 28 Days Later was one of the first movies to be shot using the $4,000 Canon XL-1 to achieve a lo-fi digital look that’s now become iconic.