An Extra Told Edgar Wright That ‘Shaun of the Dead’ Would Go Straight-to-Video
Some artists who worked on Shaun of the Dead didn't believe that the future cult classic could even secure a theatrical release — taking a Batman soundtrack to the brain will make anyone think crazy thoughts.
When Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg started filming their first joint feature in 2003, they probably didn’t expect to still be talking about Shaun of the Dead over twenty years later. What began as a humorous pastiche of George A. Romero’s landmark zombie movies eventually became the single greatest zombie comedy of all time, and the first film of Wright and Pegg’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy single-handedly ushered in the golden age of the genre one pint at a time.
Later this summer, the extended afterlife of Shaun of the Dead will culminate in a 20th anniversary theatrical re-release despite the fact that, back when Wright and Pegg were filming what would become their breakout hit, some members of the Shaun of the Dead cast and crew didn’t even think the film would make it to theaters the first time.
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In an IndieWire oral history of Shaun of the Dead, Pegg recalled how, thanks to Wright’s scrawny appearance and young age at the time of the film’s production, one extra on set didn’t recognize Wright as the film’s director and told him that Shaun of the Dead’s only shot at life was with a straight-to-VHS release. Today, that extra’s face has got red on it.
“We liked the idea of doing a zombie film that wasn’t first and foremost about the zombies,” Wright explained of the unusual premise behind Shaun of the Dead that led to the most comically conversational zombie film ever. “We show a zombie apocalypse through one character’s experience as he’s going through his own quarter-life crisis: a perpetual adolescent whose life is starting to unravel.”
Given that the film world was fresh off the heart-pumping success of 28 Days Later when Wright and Pegg began shooting Shaun of the Dead, it’s understandable that certain members of the film’s cast and crew felt that the drastically different tone of Wright and Pegg’s project would be too casual for a moviegoing world that exclusively associated zombies with horrific intensity and explosive action sequences.
Specifically, Wright’s DP objected to a hilariously downplayed scene that would become one of the most iconic shots of Wright’s career. “I had a discussion with my director of photography who was convinced the long scene of Shaun going to the shop was ‘shoe leather’ — meaning it was boring and was going to be cut,” Wright explained. “After he said that, whatever detail had been in that shot tripled. I wanted to make a shot that was so cool, so amazing, it was impossible to cut it. I felt compelled to prove it was worth doing. I was really happy that not only did it make it into the film, but it’s still the shot people always talk about.”
But that DP wasn’t the only one on set who doubted Wright’s vision for the film, nor were they the only person bold enough to say so to Wright’s face — even accidentally. “I think it was hard for Edgar to be taken seriously by his crew at first because they assumed he was just some punk kid,” Pegg said of his perennial collaborator. “Many people thought the film would go straight-to-video. An extra said that to Edgar, not realizing he was the director. But he was so assured and certain in terms of what he wanted to do that, eventually, they all respected him and understood.”
Twenty years later, Wright, Pegg and the rest of Shaun of the Dead gang are gearing up for an end-of-summer victory lap that will see the film return to movie theaters across America and the U.K. starting August 29th, and sealed Shaun of the Dead VHS tapes are collectors items that can cost hundreds of dollars online.
Maybe a video release wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
