Edgar Wright Edgar Howard Wright is an English film and
television director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He is most known for his "Three
Flavours Cornetto trilogy" consisting of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End,
in collaboration with friends and recurrent collaborators Simon Pegg, Nira Park and Nick
Frost. He also collaborated with them as the director of the television series Spaced.
He also co-wrote, produced and directed the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Along
with his friend Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat, he co-wrote Steven Spielberg's The Adventures
of Tintin. Wright and Cornish co-wrote the screenplay of upcoming superhero film Ant-Man,
which Wright will direct for a planned release in July 2015.
Early life Wright was born in Poole, Dorset, but grew
up predominantly in Wells, Somerset. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wright directed
many short films, first on a Super-8 camera which was a gift from a family member and
later on a Video-8 camcorder won in a competition on the television programme Going Live. These
films were mostly comedic pastiches of popular genres, such as the super hero-inspired Carbolic
Soap and Dirty Harry tribute Dead Right (the latter of which was eventually featured on
the DVD release of Hot Fuzz). In 1992-1994 Wright attended the Bournemouth
and Poole College of Art (now Arts University Bournemouth) and received an ND in Audio-Visual
Design. Career
Early works (1994-1998) Wright made his feature film debut in 1994
with a low budget, independent spoof western, A Fistful of Fingers, which was picked up
for a limited theatrical release and broadcast on the British satellite TV channel Sky Movies.
Despite Wright's dissatisfaction with the finished product, it caught the attention
of comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who subsequently chose him as the director
of their Paramount Comedy channel productions Mash and Peas and Sir Bernard's Stately Homes.
During this time he also worked on BBC programmes such as Is It Bill Bailey? and Alexei Sayle's
Merry-Go-Round. In an interview with journalist and author Robert K. Elder for The Film That
Changed My Life, Wright attributes his edgy and comedic style to his love for An American
Werewolf in London: Spaced (1998-2001)
In 1998 writer/actors Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson were in the early stages of developing
their sitcom Spaced for Channel 4 and thought of asking Wright to direct having fondly remembered
working with him on the 1996 Paramount comedy Asylum. Wright gave Spaced an unusual look
for the sitcom genre, with dramatic camera angles and movement borrowed from the visual
language of science fiction and horror films. Instead of shying away from these influences
Wright makes an active effort to show his referencing, adding a 'Homage-O-Meter' to
all of his releases, a device that displays each directorial nod he has made during shooting.
In 2002, he made appearances as a scientist and a technician named Eddie Yorque during
both series of Look Around You, a BBC programme created by a member of the Spaced cast, Peter
Serafinowicz. He also made two brief appearances in Spaced, one in which he can be seen, along
with other crew members on the series, lying asleep in Daisy Steiner's squat as she prepares
to leave for her new house. The other is a brief appearance during the montage in the
episode "Gone" where Daisy describes to Tim what she thinks would be a fun night out for
the two. Edgar is sitting on the subway (with a beard) next to Tim and Daisy.
The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy and Scott Pilgrim (2004-2013)
The critical success of Spaced paved the way for Wright and Pegg to move to the big screen
with Shaun of the Dead, a zombie comedy which mixed a "Brit flick" romantic comedy style
with homages to the horror classics of George A. Romero and Sam Raimi. The film was a great
success both critically and financially, and its rooting in American genre cinema helped
to make it a transatlantic hit. The pair subsequently planned out a trilogy
of British genre-comedies which were connected not by narrative but by their shared traits
and motifs. The trilogy was named "The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" by the pair due
to a running joke about the British Ice Cream product Cornetto and its effectiveness as
a hangover cure. Wright explained to Clark Collis in an interview for Entertainment Weekly,
"We put that joke in Shaun of the Dead where Nick asks for a Cornetto first thing in the
morning. When I was at college, it was my hangover cure—probably still is my hangover
cure. Then we put it into Hot Fuzz because we thought it would be a funny recurring thing.
One journalist in the United Kingdom said, 'Is this going to be your theme as a trilogy?'
and I said, 'Yes, it's like Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy. This is the Three Flavors
Cornetto trilogy.' It was just a joke that stuck." Collis observes that the films also
feature "a running gag involving garden fences." The second installment was the comedy action
thriller Hot Fuzz. Production started in March 2006 and the film was released in February
2007 in the United Kingdom and April 2007 in the United States. It revolves around Pegg's
character, Nicholas Angel, a police officer who is transferred from London to rural Sandford,
where grisly events soon take place. In 2010 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was released;
its over-$85 million budget dwarfed the £8 million budget of Hot Fuzz. The film, based
on the graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim, was co-written, co-produced and directed by
Wright. It took in roughly half its budget in box office, in spite of its critical reception
and praise from fellow directors such as Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino and Jason Reitman.
The third installment of the trilogy, The World's End, premiered in London on 10 July
2013. The film is about several friends who reunite when one decides to repeat a pub crawl
they did 20 years earlier. They have to get to The World's End pub without ending up in
the gutter to do this, but some unusual powers are at work and what happens to them may determine
what happens to humans as a species. Upcoming projects (2013-present)
Wright has been developing a live-action film based on the Marvel Comics superhero Ant-Man
with Joe Cornish. The film is scheduled to be released on 31 July 2015 and will star
Paul Rudd in the titular role. Wright also has numerous other projects in
development, including Them, Baby Driver and a film version of the television series The
Night Stalker, starring Johnny Depp, which was announced in early 2012.
In 2008, Wright was rumoured to be directing a remake of the 1961 British kaiju film Gorgo.
It was reported the film would employ a man in a suit to portray its monster (as had the
original film). Other works
Wright cites Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as his favourite band: several Blues Explosion
songs feature in Wright's film Hot Fuzz, including one written specifically for the film. Wright
has directed two videos for his ex-girlfriend Charlotte Hatherley: "Summer" and "Bastardo".
He has also directed promos for 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Mint Royale and The Bluetones.
Many of these videos have been made available to view on the "Archives" section of his official
website. Wright has a brother, Oscar, who is a comic
book artist, contributing storyboards, conceptual art and promotional pictures for Edgar's films.
For example he designed comic book interpretations of the characters of Shaun of the Dead and
created the animation for the flickbook PC Danny Butterman uses in Hot Fuzz, as well
as the art for the "Plot Holes" features on both the Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead DVD
releases. Oscar also was on set for the Hot Fuzz poster shoot to help Edgar out with the
design. Oscar also directed the Charlotte Hatherley video for "Behave" and also designed
the 8-bit Universal Pictures logo at the beginning of the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World along
with Edgar. In 2007, Wright directed a fake trailer insert
for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse, called "Don't". It was a plotless
trailer that mocked horror clichés, with lines such as, "If you... are thinking...
of going... into... this... house... DON'T!". In 2010, Wright was under consideration to
direct Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. However, the film was directed by Brad Bird.
In November 2011, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven
Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin
was released. Wright co-wrote the film with writing partner Joe Cornish and Steven Moffat.
The film also co-starred Wright's frequent collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Wright directed one single shot of the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by
J. J. Abrams, and co-starring his friend Simon Pegg. According to him, it is a one second-long
shot during the scene featuring the Klingons on Kronos.
Personal life Despite considering that the most influential
film on him was John Landis' An American Werewolf in London (according to his interview in The
Film That Changed My Life), Wright also mentioned Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II and the Coen brothers'
Raising Arizona as films that made him want to be a director. The day he met Raimi and
told him so, Raimi joked saying "Don't say that, you make me feel old."
In 2009, Wright began a relationship with actress Anna Kendrick after meeting on the
set of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The couple split in early 2013. He was previously in
a relationship with singer-songwriter and former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley.
Wright is a friend of fellow director Garth Jennings, and made cameos in his films The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow. Jennings himself had cameos in Shaun
of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. Collaborations
Wright has cast certain actors in more than one of his films/television series. Simon
Pegg is Wright's most frequent collaborator, appearing in six of his films. Scott Pilgrim
vs. the World and Ant-Man aren't listed because no actor on those films had previously collaborated
with him. Filmography
Television Awards and nominations