Hollywood Just Ghosted a Sci-Fi Trilogy—And Boyle Still Has Regrets
Danny Boyle just confirmed what Sunshine cult fans have whispered for years—his 2007 space thriller wasn't meant to stand alone. It was supposed to ignite a trilogy. But after the film's dim box office returns, those bold plans were incinerated faster than the Icarus II hull. And now, nearly two decades later, we're left wondering: What the hell did we lose?
“It was supposed to be a trilogy,” Boyle told Collider, casually dropping a bomb that sci-fi Twitter still hasn't recovered from. “Alex [Garland] wrote two other parts… [but] it was a planetary trilogy.”
No leaked scripts. No concept art. Just a vanishing outline and a single haunting phrase from Boyle himself:
“An extraordinary idea in one of them involved ‘looking outside and moving.'”
Cryptic. Chilling. Classic Garland.
This Changes Everything—Or Nothing
Let's be real: Sunshine was always weird in the best way. A cerebral space odyssey with a Kubrickian soul, it took a hard left into slasher horror two-thirds in—and divided audiences harder than pineapple on pizza.
And it flopped. Hard.
- Budget: $40M
- Worldwide Gross: ~$32M
(source: Box Office Mojo)
That financial nosedive obliterated sequel chances, despite a cast that reads like a Marvel prequel fever dream—Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne—each a future franchise titan.
Boyle said it himself:
“The movie did no business at all!”
In another timeline, that trilogy might've been sci-fi's answer to Linklater's Before Sunrise series—set not in Vienna, but across dying stars. Instead? Hollywood buried it, while Transformers raked in billions. Pain.
The Sci-Fi What-If That Still Haunts Us
The real kicker? Sunshine is finally getting the recognition it always deserved. In forums, fan retrospectives, and film school syllabi, its influence lingers—like radiation after a solar flare.
It's the rare genre film that dared to ask cosmic questions and then answered them with a flamethrower. And now, knowing it was meant as just Part 1? That reframes everything. Not unlike when audiences discovered The Matrix was only the beginning—or when Blade Runner 2049 recontextualized the original.
“I love the film,” Boyle said. “Some of that film, I just think, ‘Wow, did I do that?'”
That's not arrogance. That's awe. The same kind that fans still feel—when they remember that haunting sun-soaked score or Cillian Murphy's eyes fixed on extinction.
