One of Britain’s hottest young directors Edgar Wright came straight from finishing the last shot on his new movie The World’s End to speak to NFTS students.
The World’s End is the final installment in Wright’s ‘3 flavours Cornetto’ trilogy of genre movies that has included the romantic-zombie-comedy Shaun of the Dead, which George Romero called his ‘favourite zombie film’ and the crime-thriller-comedy Hot Fuzz.
His latest film, due for release in August, is described as a sci-fi-comedy about teenage friends who reunite 20 years later to re-live their youth by repeating an epic pub crawl to The World’s End pub – but this time it leads to a struggle for the future of humankind!
“I’ve always been fascinated by horror and genre films. Equally I’m very fascinated by comedy,” said Wright in the session chaired by director Corin Hardy, one of Screen International's Stars of Tomorrow. Hardy is also developing his own debut horror feature The Good People which he hopes to shoot this summer.
During the Masterclass that included clips of films he’d made as a teenager, Corin and Edgar revealed to the packed audience that they’d been friends since the age of 13 when they meet at a film festival and discovered they shared the same favourite film - Evil Dead II.
They delighted the audience with footage from a 1990’s children’s TV show called Gimme5 on which they both appeared with some of their early film-making, aged 17. You can watch the clip on YouTube here.
Wright said that he liked working with his friends and had kept up the tradition since the early days when, aged 14, he made his first no-budget films starring his mates. The World’s End, his 3rd film with Working Title, reprises the winning collaboration with Spaced and Hot Fuzz co-writer Simon Pegg who once again stars alongside Nick Frost, with Martin Freeman (Shaun of the Dead, The Hobbit, Sherlock), Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz, The Bourne Ultimatum), Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes) and Rosamund Pike (Jack Reacher). Also in the audience were 54 participants, aged 16-19, on the BFI Film Academy which the NFTS is running.
A self-proclaimed sci-fi, horror, genre geek, Wright encouraged people of all ages to get out and make films they enjoyed making and not be put off by technology. “I started making zero budget films at the tender age of 14, first with a second hand Super8 camera and then on Video 8. And some of these films landed me on the telly,” he said.
Following the success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright directed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) starring Michael Cera that one film critic said was so good it’ll “…make your head explode. But in a good way, not with brains and stuff.” He went on to co-write with Joe Cornish and Steven MoffattThe Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn (2011) directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson.
Wright's visit follows hot on the heels of Oscar-winning screen writer Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty), Titan of TV Michael Grade, pioneer of German New Wave cinema Wim Wenders and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason director Beeban Kidron who've all given Masterclasses this year.
