As you all have probably heard by now, 28 Years Later, which just premiered on the 2025 movie schedule, is an all-around great cinematic experience (even more so in the 4DX format). Like a lot of the critics who saw it before release (including CinemaBlend’s Mike Reyes, who gave it a 5-star review), I loved just about everything about the movie, including a great callback to 28 Days Later. If you’re wondering if I’m talking about Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “East Hastings,” then you’d be correct.
After hearing the song that first introduced me to one of my favorite bands more than 20 years ago, I started to recall all these stories from the early 2000s about how Danny Boyle was able to get the anti-capitalist Canadian post-rock collective to let him use the track in 28 Days Later’s iconic London sequence. If you’re not familiar, the story is really cool…
Danny Boyle Shot The Iconic London Sequence First, And Put “East Hastings” While Editing The Scene
Cillian Murphy’s Jim is walking through an abandoned London. The scene, which takes place weeks after the zombie apocalypse started in England, was actually the first thing Danny Boyle shot, as he revealed in a June 2025 interview with NME. During the chat, Boyle was asked about the music that inspired his film, and the filmmaker was quick to point out:
after the Disney acquisition) use the track in 28 Days Later, but the director persisted.
During a June 2025 conversation with Soundtrack Extra with Edith Bowman, Boyle said the band was “quite suspicious about Fox,” the company that owned Searchlight at the time, and rightfully so. However, upon traveling to Newcastle to see the band and have dinner with them, Boyle was able to show them the scene and explain what the movie was about. Though the band eventually signed off on it, they didn’t allow the track to show up on the soundtrack, as pointed out in a 2022 Guardian piece on Godspeed’s rise in popularity.
one of the best in recent memory, you can find the legendary song on Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s classic album, F#A#∞.