Today filmmaker Edgar Wright is known as one of the most singular creative voices in Hollywood. Wright first broke into the mainstream consciousness with 2004’s zombie horror-comedy classic Shaun of the Dead. Since then, fans have clamored for Wright to make a sequel to the cult hit film. But in a recent interview with SFX Magazine, Wright explained that he feels he has said all he wanted to say in that particular genre with the original film itself.
“I haven’t gone back to horror-comedy, because with Shaun of the Dead I felt like I had said much of what I wanted to say with that movie. It’s difficult to return to that, even as a producer. Sometimes I get sent films – people want to make the next Shaun and want me to come aboard as a producer. But I find it difficult to cover the same territory again.”
Shaun of the Dead told the story of an aimless slacker named Shaun, played by Simon Pegg, who finds himself unexpectedly thrust into the middle of a zombie apocalypse in London. Faced with the prospect of a grisly death, Shaun and his friends must navigate the city using any makeshift weapons at their disposal until help arrives.
The movie is credited with reviving interest in horror-comedies that are not straight-up spoof films like the Scary Movie franchise. Aside from making stars out of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead is frequently a part of critics’ lists of the greatest British movies of all time, and several filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino (who inspired Wright’s next movie) to George A. Romero have publicly expressed their love for the film.
Naturally making a sequel to such a highly-acclaimed movie would be a formidable task, and Wright does not currently seem to feel compelled to add anything further to the mythology of Shaun’s war against the zombies, though Simon Pegg teased a remake with vampires. According to the filmmaker, he wants to focus on taking up new challenges as a storyteller rather than retreading old ground with a sequel.
“The thing is that films take so long to make. I think that’s the thing that fans don’t quite understand sometimes. They’ll say, ‘Why don’t you knock out a Shaun sequel?’ It’s like, these films take three years to make, you’ve got to really, really love it to do it. So because films take longer to make, trying to challenge yourself with a different subject matter or something you haven’t done before, it’s always the real motivator.”
While a sequel to Shaun of the Dead seems unlikely at this point based on Wright’s comments, other filmmakers have added their own notable spins to the zombie horror-comedy genre over time, from Zombieland to the more recent Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
For his part, Edgar Wright’s focus is currently on the release of his upcoming film Last Night in Soho, which will see Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy alongside Thomasin McKenzie, and Matt Smith in what is being billed as a time-traveling horror film. Last Night in Soho is scheduled to hit theaters on October 29. This news comes to us from GamesRadar.