Related Resources • "Shaun of the Dead" Credits, Trailer and Website • Upcoming Theatrical Releases

How did you come up with your rules on how to kill a zombie?
EDGAR WRIGHT: One of the things about the film is that it takes place completely in George Romero's universe. One of the ideas is that if “Dawn of the Dead” is happening in Pittsburgh, this is what's happening in North London. In terms of like the rules, the folklore, we worked completely within George Romero's universe. Sort of like the idea that it's almost a parallel story.

The chemistry between the roommates is very believable. You get the feeling Simon's character, Shaun, and Nick Frost's character, Ed, have known each other forever.
EDGAR WRIGHT: The good thing there is that Simon and Nick shared a flat together for like seven years.

Does “Shaun of the Dead” reflect your real life relationship?
SIMON PEGG: Oh, very much so. A lot of it was based on our time together. We both used to be 'Ed' [the couch potato who doesn't work] I think was the thing. We had a pub that was our place where we always went; we didn't want to go anywhere else. A lot of that is taken from real life. And my relationship with Nick is such that we're very close and we really are best friends. With Edgar, as well. We don't have to say that much to each other to understand what we mean.

EDGAR WRIGHT: Kind of the part of the girlfriend is almost like me speaking, isn't it?

SIMON PEGG: Yeah.

EDGAR WRIGHT: The part where Liz asks, “Can't we go somewhere else?” Simon and Nick used to go to this particular pub and I live in a different part of London, so I used to always say to them, “Do you guys want to hook up in town? Why don't you come into town?” It was like, “Why do we have to go to the same place every night?” I was like the wife.

Was this really tightly scripted or was there a lot of adlib? SIMON PEGG: Very tightly scripted.

EDGAR WRIGHT: It was very tightly scripted, actually. Mainly because - there's a couple of adlibs - but because of the rhythm of the dialogue and stuff, and because so much dialogue is repeated or there are things that are said in the first half hour that have ramifications later. We'd often find that when actors start riffing on things, we'd have to say, “Oh no, you have to say it like that because that line comes back later.”

There's a lot of things to pick up on [during] a second watch, as well, when you kind of know where it's going. There's things that have more resonance when you know what's going to happen. It's been good for the DVD in the UK, people have watched it a lot of times and on the Internet kind of said, “Alright, I've watched it four times and I've just spotted that in the background.” Like a lot of the zombies that are significant later on can be seen in early stages. Like the opening credits, for instance, all of those commuters and people in the opening credits all turn up as zombies later. There's a lot of lines that Shaun and Ed and Liz say that kind of have some resonance later on. Some very obvious, and some not so obvious. One of our favorite films is “Raising Arizona.” I remember watching that about six times and after the sixth watch, noticing something I'd never noticed before.

Is there a lot of extra stuff you shot that ended up on the DVD?
EDGAR WRIGHT: Not in terms of scenes. There's about six minutes of…not deleted scenes. There's only one or two completely deleted scenes, mostly it's stuff being extended.

SIMON PEGG: There's loads of behind the scenes stuff. We shot loads of that.

EDGAR WRIGHT: Yeah, the DVD is really jam-packed.

SIMON PEGG: There are video diaries of myself, Lucy [Davis], one of the zombies – a friend of ours – did a video diary of his days as a zombie. There's outtakes and we did special little comic strips to describe scenes you didn't see in the film.

EDGAR WRIGHT: To plug the plot holes. We thought we'd explain some of the holes.

I didn't really catch any plot holes.
EDGAR WRIGHT: Well, not so much holes. The ones that we explain on the DVD are not so much plot holes as missing links. It's like where does Shaun run off to when he disappears for like 20 minutes, when he decoys the zombies away. It's like, “Where is he going?” so they explain what he did for 20 minutes.

How did you two originally hook up?
SIMON PEGG: Through a computer dating agency (laughing). We met because Edgar was working with some colleagues of mine. And Edgar had seen me on television doing some stand-up comedy and came up to say hello. Then we ended up…

EDGAR WRIGHT: We did a show together before “Spaced,” which was kind of like our hit single (laughing). We did another show before that which was on cable, which was a kind of little seen show but it featured a lot of the people who are both in “Spaced” and Shaun of the Dead.” It was a really great, low-budget, experimental working period where we just went crazy and laid down the foundations for “Spaced.”

SIMON PEGG: I was very impressed with what I saw Edgar do and when we came to think of a director for “Spaced” – myself and Jessica Stevenson – we immediately thought of Edgar. He was our first and last choice, and fortunately he did it.

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"SHAUN OF THE DEAD" RESOURCES:
"Shaun of the Dead" Credits, Trailer and Websites