We may live in a world where reboots and sequels are peddled out on a seemingly endless conveyor belt, but one person who won’t be following that trend is Simon Pegg, who has confirmed that fans won’t be seeing a follow-up to his beloved 2004 film Shaun of the Dead any time soon. The actor, who starred in and co-wrote the comedy, has pleaded with fans to “move on”, however teased that another collaboration with director Edgar Wright is tentatively now in the works.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Pegg expressed frustration with being asked about a follow-up, saying "If I ever do an Instagram Live or whatever, people are always like, 'I need Shaun of the Dead 2 in my life.' And I’m like, 'No, you don’t fucking need Shaun of the Dead 2! The last thing you need is Shaun of the Dead 2! It’s done. Move on!'" When the original film released back in 2004, it grossed $30 million at the box office and was met with wide acclaim, going on to become a classic of the comedy genre; the film currently holds an impressive score of 92% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The success of Shaun of the Dead spawned a series of collaborations between Pegg and Wright, who went on to work on Hot Fuzz (2007), and later The World’s End (2013), with the series becoming known as The Cornetto Trilogy.
Pegg revealed that while fans shouldn’t expect to see the initial film receive a sequel, they can look forward to a new collaboration between him and Wright, as a fourth film is now in the early stages of development. The actor promised that whatever project comes next, it will be an entirely new concept; Pegg shared that "whatever Edgar and I do next, we’re not going to rely on what we’ve done before.” The star won’t be playing it safe however, and hopes to invert people’s expectations, explaining that "I like the idea of pissing people off. There’s something fun about torching everything. Everything that people think we are, that’s what we won’t be. We should just do something that no one’s expecting, but no one wants!"
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Simon Pegg is Busy With Another Franchise
While Pegg doesn’t intend to turn his own creations into franchises, that hasn't stopped him from joining one the world’s most iconic; the actor’s latest film is Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh film in the long-running, Tom Cruise-led action series. Pegg stars as Benji Dunn, having appeared in each installment since 2006’s Mission: Impossible III.
As Dead Reckoning Part One is set to hit theaters later this month, director Chris McQuarrie revealed to Total Film that Wright also had a hand in crafting the new project. He revealed that the fellow director made a suggestion which “changed the entire movie,” explaining that "Edgar came to one of the later screenings [of the film], and asked one simple question about a specific sound – kind of an audio cue – and I thought I’d addressed that note.” He continued, “it was so obvious to me. But it wasn’t obvious to Edgar. And when I asked the audience, it wasn’t obvious to them either. Nobody thought to bring it up until Edgar did. And that changed the entire movie. It changed the entire movie for the better.”
Check out Colider's interview with Pegg below:
