You've Got Red on You: How Shaun of the Dead Was Brought to Life

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The pair regarded Shaun of the Dead not as a parody of Romero’s films but as a love letter to them, with the humour coming from the collision of this apocalyptic scenario with humdrum London life. “I have, for many years, reiterated the fact that every zombie film, they’ve all stolen from George Romero,” says Pegg. “The cannibalistic viral zombie was entirely his idea, which was so brilliant and scary, and the most contemporary classic monster. They stand alongside vampires and werewolves, but those things have been around for hundreds of years. George came up with this in 1968.”

You've Got Red on You] gives unparalleled access to near everyone involved with the movie, plus sketches, script drafts, storyboards, and BTS photos aplenty."— Total Film

Helen Mirren wanted to play Nick Frost’s part

I heard it was a romantic-comedy with zombies, and I was like, well, that sounds sh*t.”— actor Rafe Spall

There were zombies getting off with each other. There were loads of zombie relationships. Two zombies got together on the pool table."— producer Nira Park A sharply written, thorough, and loving tribute to a modern-day cinema classic."— Kirkus, starred review One of the best [pop culture books this holiday season] is You’ve Got Red on You, Clark Collis’ breezy-yet-thorough look at 2004’s horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead…it instantly takes its place in the upper echelon of making-of books."— Josh Sewell, Times-GeorgianPegg and director Edgar Wright decided to follow the example of legendary director George Romero’s zombie films — and in particular, the consumer culture-parodying Dawn of the Dead— by having a nugget of sociopolitical satire at the heart of their script for Shaun of the Dead. The film foregrounded the idea of how monotonous dead-end jobs, the grind of urban existence, and even the brain-numbing nature of mass entertainment can turn people into the undead even without the intervention of a zombie virus. The overarching joke of the film’s first half would be how long it takes Shaun to realize that Londoners have become zombies, so similar are the shambling, blank-eyed ghouls to the living people they once were. Some of the unpaid extras who were playing the film’s ravenous undead became hungry for each other during the weeks spent shooting the scenes set at The Winchester Tavern.” There were zombies getting off with each other,” says producer Nira Park. “There were loads of zombie relationships. Two zombies got together on the pool table.” Screenwriters Wright and Pegg took parodic aim at the UK-set romantic comedies written by Richard Curtis, such as the 1994 hit Four Weddings and a Funeral and 1999’s even more successful Notting Hill. “We didn’t ever really want to parody zombie movies,” says Pegg. “We wanted to make a zombie movie. What we wanted to parody was the Richard Curtis-style rom-com, where there’s a London love story going on. Richard Curtis, by the way, is a really lovely man, and this was in no way a detriment to him, but we pitched it as ‘Richard Curtis shot through the head.’”

So many relationships grow and expand over the course of Collis' book that readers will find themselves falling in love with Shaun of the Dead– to say nothing of Wright, Pegg, and Frost – all over again, twenty years on. 4/4 stars."— Starburst Romero was a hugely influential figure in the history of horror. Together with a small group of Pittsburgh-based collaborators, the filmmaker had created the modern zombie genre with his low-budget 1968 directorial debut Night of the Living Dead. Previously, movie zombies had been depicted as the subservient tools of evildoers, an idea based on Haitian folklore. Romero’s zombies were a much more alarming species: revived corpses hell-bent on devouring the flesh of the film’s characters, who seek refuge in a remote farmhouse. Once bitten, the ghouls’ victims themselves transform into the undead and go hunting for people to eat. Though slow-moving, Romero’s zombies can only be stopped when they are shot in the head or receive some other significant brain trauma. You've Got Red On You details the previously untold story of 2004's Shaun Of The Dead, the hilarious, terrifying horror-comedy whose fan base continues to grow and grow. After consulting dozens of the people involved in the creation of the film, author Clark Collis reveals how a group of friends overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to make a movie that would take bites out of both the UK and the US box office before ascending to the status of bona fide comedy classic.

The director was on vacation in Florida, and had watched Shaun of the Dead at 10 a.m. Eastern time at the Island Cinema in the small beach town of Sanibel. Now, Pegg was waiting in his north London home for Romero to call and give his verdict. “I was in the kitchen in my house in Crouch End, the first house I’d bought with my then-girlfriend, now wife,” says Pegg. “I was pacing up and down like I was expecting test results.” The intricately rendered and definitive story behind the creation of Edgar Wright’s cinematic rom-zom-com tour-de-gore’s that is Shaun of the Dead, recounted with affection by the one and only Clark Collis."— The Nun director Corin Hardy The movie’s executive producer Jim Wilson arranged for American horror director George A. Romero to watch the film, in the hope that he would give it a buzz-generating quote. “This all came from Edgar,” says Wilson. “He was like, ‘I want George Romero to see it.’” Wilson knew an agent in Los Angeles named Frank Wuliger who worked at The Gersh Agency, which represented Romero. With Wuliger’s assistance, the executive producer “eventually got a print to somewhere where George Romero could see it.”

Simon Pegg paced around the kitchen of his home in the north London neighbourhood of Crouch End, waiting for the phone to ring. It was the evening of 26 March 2004, and the 34-year-old stand-up comedian and TV actor had just entered a new phase of his career – or hoped to have done so – portraying the title role in the low-budget horror-comedy film Shaun of the Dead. You’ve Got Red on You details the previously untold story of 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, the hilarious, terrifying horror-comedy whose fan base continues to grow and grow. After speaking with dozens of people involved in the creation of the film, author Clark Collis reveals how a group of friends overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to make a movie that would take bites out of both the UK and the US box office before ascending to the status of bona fide comedy classic.We didn’t ever really want to parody zombie movies. We wanted to make a zombie movie.”— actor Simon Pegg An exemplary movie retrospective, one which combines an astonishing amount of research with a real flair for storytelling. 5/5 stars."— SFX