“After ‘Hot Fuzz‘ we always thought it would be rude not to wrap the films up in a neat trilogy,” director Edgar Wright recently told Yahoo! Movies about “The World’s End,” the upcoming last film in his mooted Cornetto trilogy (a British ice cream that features in all three movies). “I think it’s a theme that haunts me and Simon [Pegg], the dubious dream of perpetual adolescence and the idea that someone is always younger than you. I think we finally finish this arc with this movie. The adolescence is over here.” So what’s this film about then beside arrested development in man children? Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from 20 years earlier unwittingly become humankind’s only hope for survival. But as Wright noted, chasing adolescence is only top of mind for one of the five friends.
“I’m really excited for Simon in this film, because in the past, he’s sort of played the slightly straighter guy – particularly in ‘Hot Fuzz,’ the goody two-shoes,” co-star Paddy Considine said of Pegg’s wayward ringleader in this movie. “Whereas in this, he gets to let out his inner hooligan.” The cast is rounded out by Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan and “The Hobbit” himself, Martin Freeman.
When marketing for “The World’s End” first began, we knew there was something that made the film more than just a pub crawl, but it seems Focus Features has given up the ghost on trying to protect the film’s otherworldly secrets. “It’s a headache but our marketing team are sympathetic to our desire to protect the film,” Pegg recently told Collider. “Unfortunately the necessity to promote a film sometimes works against it, in that you are forced to reveal information that in an ideal world, you would hold back.” Granted, the first trailer for the film revealed lots, but in case you had any doubt about the… invaders of the movie, well this second new trailer doesn’t hold back at all.
Yet, secrets or not, we’re kind of glad the film didn’t try and pull a J.J. Abrams and ruthlessly keep things hidden. And the movie looks entertaining and funny regardless. The cast is rounded out by Rosamund Pike, and it includes a lot of English character actors like “Game of Thrones” bastard Walder Frey (David Bradley) and if you’ll look closely, you’ll spot, “Sightseers” star Steve Oram. In theaters August 23rd, we have a feeling fans at Comic-Con will get an early peek at the film in July.
Spotted the brilliant Michael Smiley too.