There's a decent amount of fan boys and
fan girls out there who are still grumpy about the Edgar Wright Ant-Man movie that
could have been, but it's time for all of us to move on.
Especially, since Edgar Wright has.
His new movie, Baby Driver, is about to hit theaters and it inspired us to throw
it all the way back to his first feature, now a bona fide cult classic.
- Okay, let's do this, yeah?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
- Yeah. I've got to wee first.
- (Sound) - Here are seven things you didn't know
about Shaun of the Dead, probably.
(Sound) - 1, 2, 3.
- (Sound) - It's fairly well known that Shaun of
the Dead is the first installation in what would eventually be known as the Cornetto
trilogy, with Hot Fuzz and World's End, filling the remaining two slots.
Hell, you can even buy a so called Three Flavours Cornetto bundle on iTunes and
take note, that's flavours with a u because British.
Anyway, what you probably didn't know is we have binge drinking to thank for
the Cornetto trilogy.
With Shaun of the Dead being the first film of the three,
Edgar Wright was inspired to cut from this, to Ed licking the Cornetto lid,
because Wright's personal hangover cure is actually Cornetto ice cream.
Hey, if he can fix his hangovers, it's probably pretty good at helping to deal
with the stress of shovel whipping your first zombie too.
(Sound) As long as we're talking about Edgar Wright you may not
have known that he also has a cameo in Shaun of the Dead.
See that zombie in the background?
Yeah, the one that just fell over?
That's him.
And quick bonus thing about Chris Martin from Coldplay.
You probably know he plays himself promoting Zombaid at the end of the movie
but he also has a zombie cameo before that.
Right here.
Boom. Moving on.
- (Sound)
(Music)
There would never have been a Shaun of the Dead, or a Cornetto trilogy for
that matter without Spaced.
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost all worked on the show together and
the third episode, Art, directly inspired Shaun of the Dead.
- You wanna piece of me?
- Come get some.
(Sound) - In the episode,
Tim hallucinates a zombie invasion, thanks to an unfortunate combination of speed,
alcohol, and Resident Evil.
Right after the episode was shot,
Wright had the idea to do a feature length zombie comedy and the rest is history.
The lesson here?
Do a bunch of drugs, and alcohol, and play video games all night and
you'll become a massively successful film maker.
Obviously, I'm kidding.
You don't do alcohol, you drink it.
Next thing.
- (Sound) Action.
- Here's yet another connection between Spaced and Shaun of the Dead.
Most of the zombie extras were just super fans of Spaced.
When they were casting Shaun of the Dead, they put a notice on the forums of
the Spaced Out fan site and used it to recruit their zombies.
It might be the only time in history that being a member of a fan forum wasn't
an absolute waste of time.
(Sound) Shaun of the Dead obviously pays homage to George Romero's Dawn of
the Dead, as well as, a host of other classic zombie movies.
But many people don't realize that the music at the very beginning of the film
is actually the same music used in the original Dawn of the Dead.
They came across it in a music library, they were using during post production and
it was a no brainer for them to keep it in the final film.
(Sound) Speaking of George Romero,
he's actually a big fan of Shaun of the Dead.
So much so, he had Simon Pegg and
Nick Frost appear in 2005's Land of the Dead as zombies.
- So, if you like me as a zombie, please come to my trailer and
I'll bite you in the face.
- Simon Pegg's zombie look was inspired by the zombie, Bub, from Day of the Dead.
Bub is Pegg's personal favorite zombie because Bub became more humanlike and
a hero in his own right.
- Say, hello, Aunt Alicia.
(Music)
They even used some of the original molds from the special effects makeup they did
on Howard Sherman as Bub to create Peg's facial appliances.
Boom, another bonus thing before our last thing.
(Sound) Unlike 99% of Hollywood, Edgar Wright and Simon Peg had the wisdom not
to do a bunch of sequels for Shaun of the Dead, ruining the property in the process.
But they did consider it.
Bright and Pegg did at one point, have a sequel in mind and
it would have been called Shaun of the Dead 2: From Dusk Till Shaun.
Now, as much I'd love that title, I do think they made the right call.
The sequel would have dealt with a new monster instead of zombies.
In the end, they decided against it because they were happy enough with Shaun
of the Dead as a one and done film, yet
again proving the Brit's are way better at self-restraint than us, Yanks.
That'll do it for today's episode, but be sure to hit the thumbs up if you guys
would be interested in seeing a Part Two on Shaun of The Dead.
We are lousy with more things that we didn't have time for today.
Thanks for watching, and subscribe to Cinefix for
more truish things about movies.
And sometimes how amphetamines and video games might actually be
super inspirational, right here on Things You Didn't Know.
(Music)
- How's that for a slice of fried gold?
- Yeah, boy.