No matter how much the fans may beg and plead, Shaun says that he will never go back to the Winchester, and that’s not going to blow over.
Back in March 2004, a zombie comedy film premiered in London, U.K. that would go on to change both the zombie and comedy genres forever. Shaun of the Dead, the first film in director Edgar Wright and writer/star Simon Pegg’s “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy, proved to be one of the most enduring and beloved cult classics in the history of horror/comedy, arguably just behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show for first place. This story of a North London slacker fighting to save his friends, his family and his ex-girlfriend from the zombie apocalypse struck a chord with sci-fi/horror/comedy nerds across the globe, but like every great story, Shaun of the Dead has an ending, and Pegg’s not about to change that for any paycheck.
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In 2025, Pegg and his old collaborator Wright are planning their return to the comedy genre that made them both movie giants more than 20 years ago. However, as Pegg impressed upon Variety this week, any Cornetto-heads hoping for a continuation of the Shaun of the Dead story will lose their heads when they see what Pegg and Wright come up with — how’s that for a bit of fried gold?
Pegg, who has a long history of shutting down fan requests for Shaun of the Dead 2, admits that it’s an honor to spend the two decades telling fans of his first big hit to find a different movie. “It’s lovely to be asked,” Pegg said of the constant questions he gets about a Shaun of the Dead sequel. “And the following that film has is the best you can hope for as a filmmaker, but Shaun is a story with a beginning, middle and end, and it’s a story that to add it it — like Alien 3 did to Aliens — might end up detracting from the original.”
“So certainly when Edgar and I make our next film, we’re gonna really disappoint everybody,” Pegg wryly promised.
But while Pegg’s continued insistence that Shaun of the Dead will get no second installment may frustrate fans of the film, the good news is that, 12 years after bringing the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy to a close, Pegg and Wright are, in fact, working on another comedy, and Nick Frost is going to be in it, too.
“It’s just a question of when, not if,” Pegg said of the next joint project, echoing what Frost predicted back in January. Pegg explained that he and Wright recently holed up in his house for three days straight, just “trying to settle on a basic premise for something,” and Pegg further revealed that he “promised” Wright that he “wouldn’t make another comedy before they work together.”
So either Pegg is going to be stuck doing drama for the rest of his career or a long-awaited, star-studded, new classic comedy is in the near future. Just don’t expect the cornetto to suddenly find a fourth flavour.
