Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead had its 20th birthday last year, and if you’re someone thinking it should have a followup, your hopes will have to remain just that.
While doing promo for his upcoming film The Running Man, Polygon asked the British filmmaker if he’d ever considered a second film. He politely declined the notion, explaining that he and longtime creative partner Simon Pegg don’t feel like there’s any gas in the tank for more Shaun adventures. In his eyes, a lot of sequels “don’t really earn their keep because all the story has been told in the first movie. […] Shaun goes 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.”
Wright’s filmography shows he’s not really a sequel guy to begin with—the closest thing would be his Cornetto trilogy, or debatably Scott Pilgrim Takes Off—but the zombie genre’s been no stranger to continuations. The Walking Dead’s had multiple spinoffs and sequel series over the years, and Zombieland, a movie often compared to Shaun of the Dead, became a mini-franchise with a TV spinoff and sequel film back in 2019. It’s also not like we haven’t become used to decades-later sequels appearing out of the blue, many of them from Disney as of late.
As far as Shaun’s concerned, Wright said he’s “not recently” been approached with doing a sequel, which he’s just fine with. Pegg’s equally content with leaving Shaun behind, saying in May the film should be left alone completely, also quashing any ideas of a reboot. To him, Shaun’s arc wrapped neatly at the film’s end, and a second “can end up spoiling the original, because when you watch the original again, you’re thinking, ‘Well they’re gonna go through this other thing.’ The resolution stops having any meaning.”
That being said, Pegg and Wright previously pitched joke sequels where the characters fight vampires up in Edinborough or do something completely different in an alternate universe. Fun thought exercises, but the two are clearly fine leaving these ideas in their heads.
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