Cillian Murphy says zombie genre was once dead

Before 2002's 28 Days Later, where Cillian Murphy played a character who fell sick to a virus that has plagued society. The genre of the movie was zombie, but the actor says it was dead before his film.

In an interview with SAG-AFTRA Foundation's Conversations program, the Oppenheimer actor said the genre was unpopular back then.

"Before '28 Days Later,' there weren't that many zombie movies — it was kind of a dead genre," he hilariously said. "So Danny and Alex rebooted it."

Interestingly, the Irish actor said he was unaware that the Danny Boyle-helmed flick was about the zombies.

"I wasn't too aware we were making a zombie movie, to be honest with you," Murphy noted, adding he hadn't seen any of George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" series.

He continued, "It was right around the time SARS happened and there was all this 'air rage' stuff going on." 

"So I never felt it was a zombie film. And I'm glad I didn't watch the Romero movies because I didn't realize how hallowed those movies were."