Edgar Wright has revealed there’ll never be a Shaun of the Dead sequel as he and Simon Pegg don’t think there is “any more story to tell”.
The 51-year-old director’s 2004 zombie comedy – co-written by and starring Pegg, and co-starring Nick Frost as his best friend Ed – was one of British cinema’s great success stories.
“There are a lot of franchises where the sequels don't really earn their keep because all the story has been told in the first movie,” Wright told Polygon of the lack of a followup film.
“When a character has gone through a massive change, it’s very difficult to have a second instalment. Shaun of the Dead has him going from being a kind of sad sack to being a hero by the end of the movie.
“So it’s very difficult to start the next movie when there’s no obvious arc. We are very happy with it being a one-and-done.”
Shaun of the Dead was the first of three films in Wright’s “Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy”, followed by 2007 buddy-cop film Hot Fuzz and the 2013 sci-fi comedy The World’s End.
They are all standalone films, though each contains a reference to a different flavour of Cornetto: Shaun of the Dead features the red strawberry-flavoured ice cream, signifying blood; Hot Fuzz has the blue original flavour, for the police; and The World’s End briefly shows the wrapper of the green mint flavour to represent aliens.
Shaun of the Dead received critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release, grossing $38.7m worldwide (£29.4m) on a $6.1m (£4.6m) budget.
It received three nominations at the Baftas that year for Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, and the Bafta Interactive Award for its DVD release.
The film made stars of Pegg and Frost. Pegg went on to star in films including Paul and Run Fatboy Run, and landed recurring roles in the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek franchises.
Meanwhile, Frost had starring roles in The Boat that Rocked, Cuban Fury and the wrestling biopic Fighting with My Family.
Wright went on to direct, write and produce Scott Pilgrim vs the World, the Oscar-nominated comedy thriller Baby Driver and 2021 psychological horror Last Night in Soho.
The filmmaker's latest project, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 dystopian thriller The Running Man, starring Glen Powell and Josh Brolin, is slated for release on Friday 7 November.
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