Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost lead us to 'The World's End'
As we speak, UK moviegoers are experiencing The World’s End courtesy of Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. The ‘unofficial’ end to the ‘unofficial’ Cornetto trilogy, as deemed by fans of their predecessors, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, premieres today in theatres across the UK with an August 23 premiere date slated for the U.S.
Centered around one man’s quest to conquer ‘The Golden Mile’ in Newton Haven, Gary King (Pegg) gets the band back together after 20 years for a relatively simple task — 5 guys, 12 pints. Seemed simple at the beginning, anyway, when the boys entered The First Post, their first stop on the golden mile. Let’s just leave it that Newton Haven has changed a bit since the boys left town back in the 90’s.
The idea for The World’s End, according to Wright, was the simple result of a real-life pub crawl he set out on early in life. “I had tried to do it in my home town in Somerset, which is actually the place where we shot Hot Fuzz, and had failed miserably, by the way, at the age of 19, said Wright. It was a particularly memorable night even though I’d only got through six of the 15 pubs.”
To further solidify why I love all that seems to circle around inside Edgar Wright’s mind palace, Wright decided to ask all of his friends from the original pub crawl to the premiere of The World’s End. “I’ve invited all of the people who came on the pub crawl with me to the premiere. Two of them I haven’t seen in over 10 years. It’s going to be amazing.“.
Wright added that he had taken both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on a follow-up pub crawl in Somerset before they shot Shaun of the Dead in 2004. “What was interesting was that second time around I was aware how pathetic it was trying to recapture this night from when I was a teenager.
Thankfully, I haven’t tried to revisit my early 80’s ‘alphabet pub crawl’ in London. I did, however, make it to the letter ‘G’, I think, getting to The George. Never made it to the Lamb & Flag, unfortunately, which would have been almost the halfway point milestone marker leaving The Nags Head for another day but, that’s another story for another day.
