Edgar Wright properly celebrates the 20th anniversary of Shaun of the Dead

With a pint of beer at the pub, listening to Queen? Not quite: the director instead announces good news to fans of his zombie film.

Shaun of the Dead celebrates its 20th birthday today. It's already been two decades since Simon Pegg and Nick Frost faced zombies in this comedy full of well-thought-out references to horror cinema, alongside cameos from British comedians, each funnier than the last.

On this occasion, its director, Edgar Wright, announces on his social networks an upcoming release of his cult film, “remastered in Dolby Vision and Atmos”. For the moment, it only mentions theatrical screenings in England, but fingers crossed that this reissue will then arrive in France, in cinemas and/or on blu-ray?

In the meantime, we are sharing below an extract from our “cornetto story” published in the February 2014 issue on the occasion of the DVD release of Last ad before the end of the world.

The zombie interview with Edgar Wright, George Romero and Simon Pegg

On April 9, 2004, a small zombie film was released (in the United Kingdom). so british which is entitled Shaun of the Dead. Frontal homage to George A. Romero, Shaun… is intended to be a direct variation of the winning formula developed with Spacedthe series of Nick Frost, Simon Pegg And Edgar Wright who loudly proclaimed the love of the three friends for the undead and the game Resident Evil 2.

The writing method is the same: Frost floats above Simon and Edgar's heads like a muse, while they fill pages with lines, funny little drawings, character movements, etc., who end up giving a script. In the pop cultural context of the time, the zombie is a distant 80s memory that Shaun… and other feature films are preparing to return to the forefront that year.

The Gospel according to Saint Romero
“It’s cyclical,” remembers Edgar. Games resident Evil of Capcom have recreated Romero's vision to the point of inspiring us. When we started writing the script, we thought that our zombie film was the only one in production, that no one was interested…” Simon continues: “So we attacked with peace of mind, convinced that no one would come to bother us. But there, in the middle of writing the script, come out 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle2003) Then Army of the Dead (2004)the remake of Zombie by Romero, directed by Zack Snyder. We were panicked. We were supposed to be the trigger for the revival but suddenly found ourselves lagging behind. Ultimately, everyone benefited from each other’s success. »

In Shaun of the Deadthe comedy is based on the stupidly human reactions of the characters in the face of a very real threat, while the romance is built on the model of the slumped thirty-year-old unable to grow up dear to Nick Hornby. Horror finally closes its claws on a small local pub where the apocalypse shifts into the intimate, at the risk of emotion. The Gospel according to Saint Romero is respected: unfunny zombies, unexplained epidemics, Winchester-style exploded heads, anxiety-provoking crowd movements…

A first attempt and a masterstroke for Pegg, Wright and Frost, who invent a style, a way of reinvesting, through genre and geek outpouring, the devastated field of good English comedy of manners (the production 50s from the Ealing and Rank studios). The perfect system for maintaining and treating their man-child neuroses.

Edgar Wright on George Romero: “He was funny, smart and great”

Immediate success
The industry takes note, success is immediate (except in France, where Shaun of the Dead painfully attracts 120,000 spectators, their box office average for the entire “Cornetto trilogy”). The film then toured the planet and revealed to the whole world the existence of cool and trendy English fanboys.

Quentin Tarantino ranks it in third position in his top of the greatest zombie films of all time and George Romero inherits a second career in return (“We prefer to think that it was George, through these remakes and these homages, who brought himself up to date”). “Ennobled”, the boys become the darling of the Hollywood geek community.

Edgar remembers: “ Peter Jackson wanted to meet us, Spielberg was a fan, Romero made us play zombies in his latest film… It was crazy. Luckily we were working hard on Hot Fuzz at the time, otherwise we probably would have lost our shit! »

Benjamin Rozovas

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg tell all the secrets of Shaun of the Dead