With the recent release Final Fantasy 14’s new expansion comes the inevitable thirsting over a new character players encounter. For Dawntrail, that character in question is a bit of a surprise. Yes Dawntrail is full of cat-like female Hrothgar, including the ever-lovable Wuk Lamat, to fawn over (in part because the…
With the recent release Final Fantasy 14’s new expansion comes the inevitable thirsting over a new character players encounter. For Dawntrail, that character in question is a bit of a surprise. Yes Dawntrail is full of cat-like female Hrothgar, including the ever-lovable Wuk Lamat, to fawn over (in part because the…
Have you ever been given a gift and then seen it destroyed? For example, let’s say someone gave you a beautiful yacht. It looks amazing and has every amenity you could ever wish for. You take it out one day to sea, go home, and then when you come back it’s been painted green and had a creepy clown statue turned into the figurehead. When you ask why the person who gave you the yacht would do this to your beautiful boat, you’re told “Well I think it looks better this way”. Now imagine that’s a superhero TV show and that it was created by a pair of people who were behind two of the greatest comic book movies of all time.
So what was that TV show? Well, it was called M.A.N.T.I.S. and who were the two creators? Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm. Yes, the man behind the blockbuster Spider-Man movie and the other who originated the script for the Batman 1989 film. It should be a no-brainer that this show would be a hit right? So what went wrong?
M.A.N.T.I.S. was created by Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm. The origins of the character are a bit sketchy. All we know for sure is that in 1993 Fox approached Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm with the request to create a superhero show. A TV movie/pilot was commissioned and the script was finished and put into production. The lead of the TV movie was Carl Lumbly, who portrayed Dr. Miles Hawkins, AKA MANTIS. Miles was a genius who had been judgmental toward the poor black community. He felt little to no empathy for their suffering. This all changed when Hawkins was paralyzed during a riot. It was discovered that a police officer was the one who shot him in the back. He tries to sue the city for this but loses, giving him a dose of the reality that the system is not as perfect as he thought.
Racked with guilt for his arrogant and dismissive behavior toward those less fortunate than him, Miles creates a suit that gives him the ability to walk again. He also creates a powerful tranquilizer dart that freezes its victims. Plus he came up with one of the coolest superhero vehicles I have ever seen. It was like a cross between the batmobile and batwing. It could transform and morph into other vehicles.
Lumbly is an incredible actor with an extensive career since the early 1980s. One of his most memorable roles at the time was in the cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Since M.A.N.T.I.S., Lumbly has since had a long career in film and television. I became a huge fan of him on Alias and he was amazing in House of Usher.
Carl was impressed by Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm’s script for M.A.N.T.I.S. and I can understand why. The TV movie was ahead of its time. It revolved around a television reporter Yuri Barnes played by Bobby Hosea and pathologist Dr. Amy Ellis played by the stunning Gina Torres. By the way, am I the only one who believes that Gina Torres just gets more beautiful as the years go by? Anyway, the rest of the cast was Steve James as a handsome inner city youth club manager named Antoine Pike, Wendy Raquel Robinson, and Christopher M. Brown as Miles’s protégés.
The TV movie was a ratings smash and was praised for its focus not only on its excellent action and special effects but also on its non-white cast. So the network commissioned the show and then changed everything that made the TV movie stand out. But what network would be stupid enough to take everything that made the show a success and chuck it? Well, the version of the show that finally made it to air and was ongoing was notably different than the hit TV movie. So what happened? Join us in the episode of Gone But Not Forgotten.
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Alec Baldwin‘s fateful foray into the Western genre turns his career and his life upside down as the actor faces an upcoming trial on the tragic on-set accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during the production of Rust. It’s a story that’s ripe for a documentary. And for such an incident that’s tied to a high-profile name, it’s seemingly big enough for two documentaries. The Hollywood Reporter has said that amid the start of Baldwin’s upcoming trial that takes place in Santa Fe this week, two documentaries that are following the unfolding events will be having their own duel while covering the trial for their respective features.
The first documentary comes from the director of the 2019 Netflix documentary Circus of Books, Rachel Mason. Mason also happens to be a close family friend of Hutchins and she “has been making a film about the cinematographer since Hutchins’ widower, Matthew Hutchins, recruited her and producer Julee Metz to the task in 2021 amid a flurry of media requests about his wife.” Mason proclaims about her film, “My motivation is to preserve someone I lost.” Her doc also has the approval of Rust producers and she has been able to interview members of the cast and crew, which includes director Joel Souza and cinematographer Bianca Cline, who joined the film to replace Hutchins when the film had resumed production in Montana back in the spring of 2023.
The other documentary comes from the director of the Oscar-nominated 2014 film Last Days in Vietnam and 2007’s Emmy-winning Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Rory Kennedy. Kennedy’s film is geared more toward Baldwin’s story, and she has been making her film with Baldwin’s participation for more than a year. There is less known about this documentary other than that Kennedy is making this film with Baldwin and business partner, Mark Bailey, under their banner, Moxie Films, which has a multiyear agreement with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment.
The State v. Alexander Rae Baldwin trial is due to start in Santa Fe on July 9th and is expected to last around two weeks. The actor faces involuntary manslaughter charges and faces a possible 18 months in prison if found guilty.
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Back in April, JoBlo’s own Kier Gomes – who hosts the JoBlo Originals Live Stream, Friday Night Flicks, on our JoBlo Originals channel and over on our RUMBLE channel – put together an episode of the Deconstructing series that took a look at the 1987 classic The Stepfather. Now Scream Factory has revealed the list of bonus features that will be included on their upcoming 4K and Blu-ray release of The Stepfather – and that list includes an audio commentary by Kier Gomes! The street date for this release is September 10th, and copies are available for pre-order at THIS LINK.
Directed by Joseph Ruben from a screenplay by popular crime novelist Donald E. Westlake (who crafted the story with
Carolyn Lefcourt and Death Wish author Brian Garfield), The Stepfather has the following synopsis: Jerry Blake is a family man, but he happens to have a series of families, with each one on the receiving end of his murderous ways. When Jerry sets his sights on a lovely widow named Susan and her headstrong daughter, Stephanie, it appears that his brutal pattern of killings will continue. However, Stephanie begins to suspect that there’s something wrong with the seemingly well-adjusted Jerry, and a violent confrontation is inevitable.
The film stars Terry O’Quinn, Shelley Hack, Jill Schoelen, Charles Lanyer, Stephen Shellen, Stephen E. Miller, Robyn Stevan, and Jeff Schultz.
Scream Factory’s new 4K and Blu-ray release of The Stepfather has the following bonus features:
DISC ONE (4K UHD):
NEW 2024 4K Restoration
Presented In Dolby Vision
Audio Commentary With Director Joseph Ruben
NEW Audio Commentary With Actor Jill Schoelen And Filmmaker Jackson Stewart
NEW Audio Commentary With Film Critic Meagan Navarro
NEW Audio Commentary With Film Critic Kier Gomes
DISC TWO (BLU-RAY):
NEW 2024 4K Restoration
Audio Commentary With Director Joseph Ruben
NEW Audio Commentary With Actor Jill Schoelen And Filmmaker Jackson Stewart
NEW Audio Commentary With Film Critic Meagan Navarro
NEW Audio Commentary With Film Critic Kier Gomes
NEW “Phantom Of The Family” – An Interview With Actor Jill Schoelen
“The Stepfather Chronicles” – A Retrospective Featuring Interviews With Director Joseph Ruben, Producer Jay Benson, Actress Jill Schoelen, Author Brian Garfield And Others On The Making Of The Film And Its Enduring Legacy
Trailers For All 3 Films
Still Gallery
Are you a fan of The Stepfather, and will you be buying a copy of this 4K and Blu-ray release from Scream Factory? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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I’ve had some fun with The First Descendant but I wouldn’t say a strong, distinctive art style is one of its core virtues. It’s a pretty derivative game from head-to-toe. Now it turns out that some of the free-to-play loot shooter’s in-game icons appear to be ripped almost wholesale from Destiny 2.
I’ve had some fun with The First Descendant but I wouldn’t say a strong, distinctive art style is one of its core virtues. It’s a pretty derivative game from head-to-toe. Now it turns out that some of the free-to-play loot shooter’s in-game icons appear to be ripped almost wholesale from Destiny 2.
Filmmaker Mike Flanagan has written some dark, disturbing endings in his career… but we shouldn’t expect to see much of that from him in the future. During a recent interview with actress Katee Sackhoff (who had a role in his film Oculus, one of his really depressing ones) for the Sackhoff Show podcast, Flanagan explained why he’s done with bleak, hopeless endings.
Flanagan told Sackhoff (with thanks to CBR for the transcription), “A lot of the stuff I was writing had really bleak endings and very hopeless endings. It pivots right after [Hill House] and everything I’ve done since then doesn’t have that.” Sackhoff asked if that’s the influence of his wife Kate Siegel coming through, and Flanagan said, “I think in a lot of ways it is. And it’s because of family. When Kate and I got together, my outlook changed a lot. We had kids of our own and the kids started growing up and it’s started to become more important for me because someday they’re going to interrogate our work. Someday we’re going to be gone and if they want to revisit us in an interesting way, they have all this work that they can look at. I never wanted them to come revisit those things and be left on a note of hopelessness. So, it’s become incredibly important to me that no matter how dark a story gets, there’s always hope and forgiveness and empathy at the end.“
The next film we’ll be seeing from Flanagan is the Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck – which is not a horror movie. Cast member David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil) described the film as a beautiful, heartfelt drama, and co-star Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) has said it’s a beautiful masterpiece.
Based on the short story from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds, The Life of Chuck consists of three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house.
Tom Hiddleston (Loki) is playing Chuck, with Mark Hamill (Star Wars) playing a character named Albie. They, Dastmalchian, and Gillan are joined in the cast by Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Jacob Tremblay (The Predator), Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Kate Siegel (Hush), Benjamin Pajak (Past My Bedtime), Trinity Jo-Li Bliss (Avatar: The Way of Water), Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World), Antonio Raul Corbo (Into the Dark: Pilgrim), Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows), Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep), Annalise Basso (Ouija: Origin of Evil), Samantha Sloyan (The Midnight Club), Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass), Matt Biedel (Aliens Abducted My Parents), Sauriyan Sapkota (The Fall of the House of Usher), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (The Haunting of Hill House), Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica), Violet McGraw (M3GAN), Molly C. Quinn (Castle), and Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street).
Of course, Flanagan isn’t leaving horror behind. He recently signed on to write and direct the next film in the Exorcist franchise, which has a release date of March 13, 2026.
Flanagan has previously brought us Absentia, Oculus, Hush, Before I Wake, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gerald’s Game, The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
What do you think of Flanagan ditching bleak, hopeless endings, and his reasons for doing so? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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The episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? covering The Silence of the Lambs was Written by Mike Holtz, Narrated by Travis Hopson, Edited by Juan Jimenez, Produced by Andrew Hatfield and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
There are many rules in the genre of horror. Never build anything on top of an ancient Indian burial ground. Don’t say “I’ll be right back”. Because you won’t. Don’t decide the best time to transfer Michael Myers to a new location is on Halloween night. That one’s simple common sense but here we are. Another should be that finding any physical media when in a horror movie is a very bad thing. From the VHS tape in The Ring to Ethan Hawke’s box of family fun in Sinister, all the way down to the Necronomicon. In today’s horror movie, the rule remains true as a snarky and unhappy couple finds blank tapes in their seedy hotel room after breaking down in the middle of nowhere (another thing you should attempt to avoid in a horror movie) and pop them in to discover they are full of not porn but rather folks being murdered and tortured. At first glance, they’ve just found some unmarked Faces of Death video tapes from the nineties. But a deeper look reveals that these are legitimate Nicolas Cage 8MM-style snuff films, the murders are taking place in the very room they are sitting in, and they are supposed to be the stars of the next tape….this is WTF Happened to VACANCY.
When The Revenant and Overlord writer Mark L. Smith was taking a vacation from the Dude Ranch he ran with his wife in Colorado, driving through New Mexico he noticed many hotels in the middle of nowhere with little to no customers. He wondered to himself how these places stayed in business. This thought, no doubt coupled with real-life news stories of hotel inhabitants finding cameras in their rooms, was the breeding ground for the creation of this 2007 thriller. In the film, a motel manager and several of his colleagues (if you can call them that? I don’t know what you’re supposed to call the dudes you make wear masks and film doing murder? Hitmen seems too professional for these perverts) have strategically placed cameras in the vents of the room as well as underground tunnels that provide entry to each room via a secret trap door under a bath mat in the bathroom. The two masked men then toy with and eventually murder the occupants in various ways and then the hotel owner sells the footage to truck drivers and other sick and twisted members of society.
Years after Vacancy (watch it HERE) would release, a 2016 story would bear a striking resemblance to the content matter of the film, about events that took place before the movie. In the story, a previous hotel owner reached out to write Gay Talese about his upcoming book titled Thy Neighbor’s Wife about sexuality in America, offering to contribute to his book. The man wrote and admitted that he and his wife ran a hotel for decades that featured crawl spaces and aluminum screens in the ceilings so that they could watch their customers and satisfy their “voyeuristic tendencies”. He would even watch his customers as he worked the front desk, placing a buzzer at the front that would notify him if someone showed up to rent a room. At one point the man claimed to even be indirectly involved in the murder of a drug dealer’s girlfriend when he flushed his drugs down the toilet, only to watch the girl be blamed for the missing drugs and strangled to death as the hotel owner watched, only reporting the incident to the police when a maid found her body. The man eventually retired, thank Christ, and the hotel has since been demolished. So even though it hadn’t been public knowledge at the time, Vacancy is sort of based on a true story, even if it didn’t know that at the time. Freaky.
Hal Lieberman of Screen Gems would go on to produce Mark Smith’s script and for a while, it was rumored that Sarah Jessica Parker would star in the film before it was announced that Kate Beckinsale of the Underworld franchise would play one-half of the unhappy couple, Amy Fox. The other half, David Fox, would be played by Luke Wilson, fresh off roles in movies like Old School and The Wendell Baker Story which, if you believe the tabloids at the time, carried over to his real life. According to The New York Post, rumblings from the set were that Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson couldn’t stand each other. Allegedly, Luke Wilson would show up hungover, late, and unprepared frequently and brag to others on set about his sexual conquests the night before. There was also an alleged issue when it came to off-camera line reading (where one actor or actress not in the scene will stand off camera and deliver lines to the other to help the realism of their scenes) as Wilson would refuse to do so for Beckinsale. Finally, she stopped showing up as well, and as legend has it sent down a photo of herself instead, inscribed with the words “Read your lines to this. It will be better for both of us.”
For what it is worth, if true, their off-screen turmoil translated well to the screen as the cathartic heart of the movie revolved around this couple’s hatred of one another before the events of the film brought them closer together. After the loss of their young son causes them to drift apart as they cope with the loss in conflicting ways, the two are traveling home from a family party both literally and figuratively. On the road…and toward their divorce. When David decides to take a shortcut off the interstate (he clearly should have watched more horror movies) their car begins to make a funny noise. He stops at a defunct-looking garage when they are both jump-scared by the mechanic about to head home for the day. Not to fear! He’s the most trustworthy-looking guy around because he’s played by Can’t Hardly Wait and Empire Records’ lovable Ethan Embry. As the writer Mark Smith said, “Embry has the ability to be charming and disarming”. In this moment he’s sight for sore eyes for both the couple and the audience. Little do they know, he’s one of the two “colleagues” I mentioned earlier and also has employment at the motel next door. Feigning niceness, he secretly sabotages their vehicle which will break down again just two miles up the road. He even gave them a sparkler! Which probably should have been a sign. That’s just weird.
Luke Wilson delivers his “Dad being an insufferable prick” voice to pure perfection when he looks over at Amy, smiling for the first time as she enjoys the sparkler, and says “I guess I ought to buy you a box of those sparklers”.
There are plenty of moments like this between the two, whether he’s judging her for suppressing her feelings with her medication or she’s not allowing him to remember his late son fondly without attacking him. At times, they are the perfect representation of a couple being dicks to each other after a fight. But the blatant sharpness of their attacks at one another is so realistic, that you start agreeing with them that it’s probably time for these two get a divorce. This believable hatred would eventually translate to a believable arc for the characters as they remember what they mean to each other when faced with a life-or-death situation. Though the movie doesn’t say for sure, we’re left to believe when it’s all said and done *Spoiler Alert!* the two survive and live happily ever after. As writer Mark Smith said, “Probably if you caught back up with the Fox’s in 10 years there would be another child in real life.”
This f*cked (bleeped) up story of love, heartbreak, snuff, and voyeurism could have easily been your typical mid-2000s unrated gorefest but director Nimrod Antal had something else in mind. The director of Predators wanted a film that was light on the gore and heavy on the Hitchcockian suspense, saying “What I liked about the film originally was the opportunity to do something elegant that was different from the norm. It didn’t concentrate on the violence and gore so much it was more of a suspense film, more of a build.” This Hitchcock tone was set at the very start of the film with a cool ass opening title sequence and score by Halt and Catch Fire Composer Paul Haslinger.
Another main character of the film was the setting of the Pinewood Motel itself. Antal had just directed the Hungarian film Control which was entered as the country’s selection for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards and takes place in the claustrophobia of the Budapest Subway system. With Vacancy, he would once again use his location to create a sense of escalating tension and panic. Two separate sets would be constructed from scratch, with one being the interior, and the other the exterior. The attention to detail was so specific that Antal mentioned that although the set was clean, he would feel the need to wash the motel off of himself after a days work.
The man at the center of the location’s perverted black heart is none other than Pulp Fiction’s Frank Whaley who was cast as the motel manager. Whaley was praised constantly by his fellow cast and crew for his performance and brought a strange but impressive Ted Raimi-esque vibe to the film. He played the character as an off-centered individual with the inability to hide his strangeness even when attempting to be polite but was also able to escalate the character into a spastic nutjob when letting his freak flag fly. He’s definitely not a guy you want to see lurking behind the dumpster at your local KFC after midnight. Yeah, that’s oddly specific. But I mean, you don’t.
Speaking of Pulp Fiction, cinematographer Andrzej Sekula worked on the film as well and together with the director was able to create a tense atmosphere for the audience throughout. Sekula would use a series of composed dolly shots for the first half of the film to make the audience feel comfortable before moving to more handheld shots to jar them as things started to escalate. Several of these moments involved intricate action scenes involving car stunts. In one scene, a vehicle takes out a phone booth with Luke Wilson’s character diving out of the way in the nick of time. In another, Kate Beckinsale forces a car through the hotel, pinning one of the masked murderers to the wall. These scenes were all shot practically without the use of CGI, opting instead for a group of ballsy stuntmen and intricate setups to pull them off….and the difference, as usual, is quite noticeable. As Antal said himself, “Those stuntmen really put their necks out and so I got something much better than anticipated.”
Not everything was so complicated, however. One of the most frightening sights Vacancy offers is the snuff tapes. Multiple tapes of multiple groups of people were filmed being tortured, stabbed, and even hung after being terrorized around the room for a few moments. To shoot these sequences they would simply go over their marks with the actors to get a general idea of where they would end up before rolling cameras and just letting things play out. The result was, according to Stunt Coordinator Luke Gilbert, “they were just so sloppy and real looking that I paid off in the end to do it that way”. And I’d have to say I agree. There’s something oddly realistic about watching the tapes presented in the film that makes you feel gross inside. To be honest, the biggest plot hole of the film is that they expected us to believe those carpets were unstained. The snuff films in their entirety are available as extra scenes on the home video release special features. That was a weird sentence to say. They shot the snuff films on the very first day on set, which no doubt set the tone for the rest of the shoot. The film as a whole left a lasting mark on its crew as well. Beckinsale said that on her next film, they were required to stay at a hotel on location and some of her co-workers who had also worked on Vacancy were all “really freaked out” to be in a motel after that.
All the effort that went into Vacancy feels worth it if you ask this guy. While not a perfect film, it’s an amazingly horrific premise that makes for a good rewatch every few years. It works as both an original idea and a solid addition to the home invasion genre, with quite a few similarities to The Strangers which would come out a year later in 2008. What starts as an esoteric premise leads into a far wider-spanning idea that asks plenty of interesting questions. Were each of those tapes in the room different murders? THERE WERE SHITLOADS OF THEM! How long have they been getting away with this? The trucker that shows up at one point purchases an entire box of VHS tapes himself. Were those all for personal use? How far does this ring of terror spread? There are many questions, each one seemingly leading to a more fascinating story.
Did critics feel the same way upon the film’s release in 2007? Not quite. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Ebert and Roeper gave the horror film a bad review, saying it was, an “uninspired, unoriginal, and chills-free thriller”. Hard disagree here. But Empire Magazine’s review at the time was a lot more thoughtful, praising the director and saying the film was, “a lean and slightly unusual genre pic that had Psycho’s fingerprints all over it.” Before acknowledging that it starts strongly but “the build-up is better than the main event.” Which is an interesting point because dynamically the film does tend to suffer a bit. The realization of the horrific predicament our couple is stuck in together is understandably hard to top for the rest of the film. This, mixed with over-exhausted horror tropes at the time is ultimately what may have led Vacancy to its mixed critical and audience responses.
The film’s marketing included a toll-free telephone number that you could call and have Frank Whaley’s voice answer as the front desk attendant of the Pinewood Motel. You could hear the screaming from the tapes in the background while he informed you of all the “killer” deals the motel had. Finally, Vacancy would open in April of 2007, just one week after fellow horror thriller Disturbia, and on the same date as Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling’s thriller, Fracture. The film opened at #4 and raked in $7.6 million in its opening weekend before pulling in $35 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million. This was enough to spawn a direct-to-video sequel just a year later titled Vacancy 2: The First Cut.
Ultimately though, the true legacy of Vacancy will be that it’s a movie that will have you searching your hotel or Airbnb incessantly for cameras. Which, to me, is the kind of thing that makes a horror movie great. It’s somewhat realistic, has a good group of lead actors to take you on the journey, asks a lot of questions, and has you looking under the (motel) bed at the end of the night. Even if yeah, I also wonder why David just sat there not moving with a knife wound in his stomach for what seemed like for-f*cking-ever. I just assumed he was tired of doing everything for Amy who….if I’m being honest? Was kind of useless the entire film until she thought he was a goner. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT I’M DOING WHEN I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF BEING CHASED BY A GUY WITH A KNIFE, K? Either way, I’m glad Vacancy exists in film form, creeped out forever that it existed once in real life form, and happy as Hell that you took the time to watch this video today. And that is just WTF Happened to Vacancy.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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A lot of fans have been clamoring for a sequel to the 2004 zombie romantic comedy Shaun of the Dead (watch or own it HERE) from the moment they first saw the end credits on that film to start to roll, but co-writer/star Simon Pegg has always been clear about the fact that he and director/co-writer Edgar Wright have no interest in revisiting the Shaun character… and during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Pegg added that he would be incensed if Universal decided to make a Shaun of the Dead reboot, going on to explain why he finds Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake to be disrespectful to George A. Romero’s original film.
Shaun of the Dead has the following synopsis: Shaun is a 30-something loser with a dull, easy existence. When he’s not working at the electronics store, he lives with his slovenly best friend, Ed, in a small flat on the outskirts of London. The only unpredictable element in his life is his girlfriend, Liz, who wishes desperately for Shaun to grow up and be a man. When the town is inexplicably overrun with zombies, Shaun must rise to the occasion and protect both Liz and his mother.
Pegg plays Shaun, and was joined in the cast by Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, and Penelope Wilton.
When The Hollywood Reporter asked him if there’s any chance of a Shaun of the Dead sequel ever happening, Pegg said, “I mean, Universal [Pictures] owns it. If they choose to reboot it, then they can if they want I guess. Although Edgar and I would be incensed. (Laughs.) … Shaun of the Dead is incredibly personal. There’s so much of us in that film. The whole joke of Ed and Shaun not being able to ever come out of The Winchester was real. That was about Nick and I, that was about our decision to just stay in a North London pub. Edgar was always in town. He was always in Soho, and he always wanted us to come into town and hang out at [London private members’ club] The Groucho, and we never did. We always wanted to be in The Shepherds [pub]. My girlfriend, now my wife, was the same. She was like, “Are we going to The Shepherds again?” That inspired that whole storyline. The whole thing with Shaun’s mum, the stepdad, I had a problematic relationship with my stepfather. It was Edgar’s idea to kill the mum. I couldn’t believe it when he said that, but it was the best decision. There’s so much of our own heart and soul in that film. If someone was to reboot it, it would be a cynical and exploitative exercise. I would hope that people are in love with our Shaun enough to resist a reboot. Gary King [Pegg’s character in The World’s End] as well, that was a lot about my own alcoholism. A really personal film. And the thought of anyone just nicking the title … I always got annoyed at Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake — it’s a great movie. It’s really exciting. But I hated the fact they called it Dawn of the Dead, because that was George [Romero]’s film. They could have called it Deadish, which was a great line in the film that one of the actors used, and it still would have been a great film, but when you just take a title because people recognize it, it’s so disrespectful to the original.“
As for why there’s no interest in making a sequel, “I’m a big fan of sequels. Some of my favorite films are sequels: Empire Strikes Back, Aliens. I’m in a couple of film franchises which repeat and reboot, and it’s not that I decry sequels in any way, but I think some stories end. Some stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. If you were to see Shaun again, if the zombies came back, there’s just not a story to tell it. We’d have to reset everything that we created in Shaun of the Dead, the journey that Shaun goes on and completes. He becomes a new person, but we’d have to then dismantle that in order to give him a new arc. Why? The best thing we can do with cinema is to challenge people and get them to see things they haven’t seen before and experience new things. Entertainment is the most overrated function of art.“
So there’s no sequel coming our way and hopefully there won’t be a Shaun of the Dead reboot, but Pegg and Wright do plan to work together again. Pegg said, “There’s something always in the works with Edgar and I. Since Shaun of the Dead, our lives have changed dramatically. We’re both busy into the distant future. The biggest challenge that we have right now is finding a moment to get together and spend six, seven weeks, to get our first draft out and come up with the idea. But we’re constantly looking for that. Edgar came over to my house last year and stayed for the week, and we just sort of talked about films and what we want to do next. We just need the time to do it. So it really is a question of when, not if.“
What do you think of what Simon Pegg had to say about a Shaun of the Dead reboot, the lack of a sequel, and the Dawn of the Dead remake? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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