The wait has been maddening! Last year, when Shaun of the Dead hit the US and changed so many lives (including mine. Seriously. The film is one of my all-time favorite movies already), Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the geniuses behind it, were saying that their next film would be Hot Fuzz, a cop comedy. And so we have waited for Hot Fuzz. And waited for Hot Fuzz. And waited.
Now, the wait looks to be coming to an end. Empire Online has received confirmation from Simon Pegg that Hot Fuzz is greenlit. “It sounds as if it’s going to be March, which is exciting,” Pegg says, underplaying how good this news is.
What’s taken so long? The script, it seems. “We’ve actually been writing it for most of the year!” laughed Pegg. “We’ve been working so hard on it. It’s such a complex script. I think the first draft was 235 pages long because we thought ‘oh fuck it, let’s just go for it, let’s just vomit it onto the page and see what happens’. And we’ve shaved off a hundred-odd pages, but it’s one of those things where if you remove one thing, there’s a pay-off later on that needs to be addressed. It’s been a far more intensive process than writing Shaun.”
They also spent a lot of time watching cop films, getting their research done. Apparently the specter of Shane Black hovers over this film in a big way.
For the rest of the story, head over to Empire Online.