Twenty-nine days later, “28 Days Later” will have a second ending. In a bid to boost repeat viewings of its horror hit, Fox Searchlight will give the zombie tale an alternative, contradictory fade-out beginning Friday.

While the film retains the ray-of-hope conclusion widely criticized by hard-core fans, it will be followed by the on-screen phrase “but what if” and appended with a fatalistic, four-minute finale intended to satisfy the gore crowd as well as to milk the cash cow.

Director Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic British film about a monkey-borne “rage” virus that turns humans into frothing beasts has made over $33.4 million in the United States and Canada. It is the most successful indie release of the year.

But reviewers and fans have complained that the hopeful resolution to the very hopeless “28 Days Later” is a sop to the sappy-endings crowd.

“Ever since the movie was released in England (in October), the debate has raged about which was the more appropriate ending,” says Steve Gilula, Fox Searchlight’s president of marketing and distribution.

To read Internet chat-room postings about “28 Days Later” is to see the fault line between those who like their endings optimistic and those who prefer them dark. According to a scribe at esplatter.com, “Happy endings always disappoint in horror movies.”

“Good over all, dumb ending,” posted punchthemonkey94 on the Fox Searchlight forum. Critic Roger Ebert agreed: Though he gave the film three stars in his Chicago Sun-Times review, he fantasized about bloody, bullet-riddled corpses instead of survivors.

According to “28 Days”‘ producers, the optimistic ending was in the original script. Boyle shot the bleaker finale – in which fewer are left standing – but discarded it after negative test screenings. Both versions, plus a storyboarded ending never filmed, are on the DVD version available in Britain since May.

“In a sense, both endings are the director’s cut,” says Gilula, adding that Boyle was entirely in support of Fox Searchlight’s decision to give audiences the double-barreled conclusion.

The offer of two outcomes for the cost of one has been successfully exploited for some time by DVD packagers who include outtakes and multiple endings. The DVD of “Training Day” (2001) contains a second, more cynical ending, considered by many as superior to the one seen by ticket buyers.

But even in theaters, “28 Days Later” is hardly the first film to offer alternative endings. Before the final reel of the 1961 film “Mr. Sardonicus,” by schlockmeister William Castle, the theater lights came up and audiences were polled on what the fate of the title character should be. But while Castle advertised alternative endings, he only shot one.

In 1985, Paramount released “Clue” with three endings. Audiences in one theater thought the perp was Col. Mustard in the conservatory; in another, the criminal was Professor Plum in the library.

It’s a truism in Hollywood that a happy ending makes for happier box-office results. Says Gilula, “This is the first time in my experience that the change to an unhappy ending has the potential to boost a movie’s profits.”

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Contact Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickeyphillynews.com.

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AP-NY-07-24-03 1040EDT

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