What, what about it makes it that cult following?

I, no, the, the books have been, like, the first book came out six years ago.

I, I think it just, um, you know, hopefully the film will do the same, but I think the books just kind of speak to a lot of people.

Like, I think, you know, there's a lot of kind of crazy stuff going on in the books, but I think most people would recognize themselves in one of the characters, whether it's Scott Pilgrim or, you know, one of his friends and stuff.

I mean, it's, it's very, as kind of insane as the film is, like, it's very relatable to, like, anybody's experiences of young love.

Now Edgar, is it true that you consulted with Quentin Tarantino about the length of time to train your actors to do these fight scenes?

That is true, yeah.

I, I, I've, I've been li- lucky enough to be, become friends with Quentin over the last couple years.

What, what about it makes it that cult following?

I, no, the, the books have been...

Like, the first book came out six years ago.

I, I think it just, um, you know, hopefully the film will do the same, but I think the books just kind of speak to a lot of people.

Like, I think, you know, there's a lot of kind of crazy stuff going on in the books, but I think most people would recognize themselves in one of the characters, whether it's Scott Pilgrim or, you know, one of his friends and stuff.

I mean, it's, it's very, as kind of insane as the film is, like, it's very relatable to, like, anybody's experiences of young love.

Now Edgar, is it true that you consulted with Quentin Tarantino about the length of time to train your actors to do these fight scenes?

That is true, yeah.

And Edgar, if you could talk a little bit about the song that's coming up, but also about the briefly, because I know you could talk a lot about Sparks.

Well, I can.

Well, they they I first saw them in 1979 on Top of the Pops.

That was my first experience with Sparks.

And I remember thinking that they really stood out on the show.

because they weren't smiling and they were staring right down the camera and so as a five-year-old i felt like i'd done something wrong um and then on one of those ktel albums i had lucky number by lena lovitch probably went straight into this next track by sparks but what's interesting about this it's funny you were saying about the potential last days of disco in 1979 they in 1978 had sort of reached an impasse with what they've been doing with bands and then session musicians And they loved Giorgio Moroder, the German producer's work with Donna Summer, who had done two of the all-time disco tracks with her, particularly I Feel Love.

And they did an interview with a German journalist where they lied and said that they were doing, they said, what are you doing next? And they said, we're doing an album with Giorgio Moroder.

And this song is called Beat the Clock.

So when you shoot that, though, it's a fairly mundane thing to shoot.Right? But then there's a s- or, or is it not? But in the p- there's a huge payoff when you see it in the movie.

They are difficult to do, and usually they're always the things that are difficult to justify, or people start asking, "Do you really need these shots?" And on Shaun of the Dead, I, it was always the thing that would always fall off the schedule, and I'm the kind of person who's quite sort of like OCD in terms of, you know, you could have 40 shots to do in a day, but if I was like, "You did 39," it's like, "Ah, I didn't get that shot of the shoelaces." It will bug me until the end of the shoot.

But on Shaun of the Dead, what we ended up doing to do those sequences, to ki- I had to sort of prove that they were really important.

We ended up on the, some of our days, it was a low budget film, we had an A and B camera, and we would stagger the lunchtime of, like, B camera, and I would stay with them over lunch and said, "Okay, we'll shoot these close-ups." And then we edited them together and showed them to, you know, the executive producers and they were like, "Oh, okay.

Now I get it." But usually what happens is at the end of a film you end up just doing all of the inserts.

So on most films, Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver being two great examples, and The Running Man for that matter, [laughs] is usually the end of the shoot is you're not ending in some kinda, like, triumph of like, "This is the last shot.

It's magic hour.

Right.

Also, Edgar Wright, who within five minutes christens my home office.

I got a pitch.

All right, go.

Citizen Cave.

Yeah.

But it, it is, it's interesting you mentioned The Revolution Will Not Be Televised because actually in the film we had to...

The original v- uh, it's actually on the end credits of Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, the original version.

We had to construct an instrumental of that, so Steve Price actually basically did an instrumental version of the track, and the reason why is because obviously it's a, a spoken word, uh, vocal, and in, in the scene it was very difficult to have that song playing and also have the dialogue that's in the scene.

And it's interesting you say about vocals, because in choosing songs for movies, sometimes it, things work perfectly in terms of, like, the lyrics are sort of either thematic to the, to the scene or it's an overall vibe, but then sometimes there's songs that I've wanted to use and then I've not used because I find myself distracted by the lyrics, and I find sometimes if songs have very specific lyrics, they might be...

For example, there was – and it's funny 'cause I ended up making a documentary about them – but in an, in Hot Fuzz at one point we tried This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us in a scene, which of course I adore that song.

Yes

... media in every way, and they haven't managed to actually create art themselves.

but i will do my best to make sure it doesn't come mid we are delighted to be joined on the running man spoiler special by the film's director and of course co-writer edgar wright how are you sir i'm good obviously people are listening for a running man uh spoilers here but i want to start off by talking about a 1972 film called sky jack oh yes so which is in your film

Yeah, so this is a sort of strange kind of...

I wouldn't even call it an Easter egg because it was unintentional.

So, you know, we started working on the script in early 22.

So myself and Michael McCall, who I co-wrote Scott Pilgrim with.

And one of the ideas...

There's a scene in William H. Macy's basement.

Was that always how you began the movie?

[laughs]

And it's like, "Where did, where did this list come from?" And I, I got in touch with the guy who made it, and I said, "Hey, I have a question.

Where did you get this list? It's like somebody had been in my brain." And he said, "Oh, it's, it's every film you've ever mentioned liking in an interview." And I was like, "Holy shit!" And then I said, "Can I, like, edit it and change some things?" So I just, uh, like, se- [laughs] se- sent...

I, I eventually expanded to, like, a thousand.

But I- it's difficult to do that, 'cause there is also, the problem about doing that is that then when you have friends with films out, they're like, "Oh, so my movie doesn't make your top 1,000." [laughs]

I just saw it, uh, the other day, and it's, uh, it's really, it's really something.

It's, it's, it...

All I like about it is, I mean, I have not seen the TV show that it's a spin-off from, and I...

With over 10 million new dollars in prizes won, the best audience in the world remains undefeated.

The thing that's interesting about The Running Man, Stephen King is not the man he was when he wrote that book.

He wrote The Running Man in 1973 in a very sort of desperate time for him and his family where they were really struggling.

I'd say in all of the Richard Backman books that were written around that time, he is the angry young man that you read in the books.

Now obviously things are different now, and it's interesting in terms of the adaptation.

The Running Man novel has a sort of famously nihilistic ending, and that was something that we didn't want to sort of do in the new adaptation.

We wanted to lose the fire, but keep the spark.

(laughs) Yeah.

(laughs)

... um, that it, that they hadn't really adapted the book at all.

It was a very loose adaptation.

So I always like felt that there was another movie in that book and had always thought about doing it, and had even looked into the rights years and years ago.

So it's like ...

And also, you know that the book is set in 2025.

Didn't you sh- shoot your shot where you're just like, "Hey, I'd like to do The Running Man," and then it all kind of came together, or?

Well, it's one of those questions that comes up-... you know, on websites or like, "If you could remake any film, what would you remake?" So I answered The Running Man.

Did you think, "We're meant to do something"?

Yeah.

We, um ...

I met him backstage at a standup show.

It was actually before I'd started doing TV, but after I'd done my first film, which I did straight out of art college, a very low-budget film.

And I saw him backstage at this comedy gig, and I had seen him on TV doing standup.

And it was actually ...

When you think back on that kid and now the current filmmaker you are, has the reason why you wanted to make movies, the reason you still continue to make movies, how has it changed?

I'm sure.

Yeah, it's, it's, I was blown away.

But wait, I wanna talk about Oscar.

Was, did, did, did that, how, were you guys close when you were young? And did he have the same love that, uh, that you had for movies and stuff? Yeah, very much.

I mean, my brother, he's two years older.

I think we went through that difficult period as teenagers where I think from the ages of, like, 14 to 17 we hated each other's guts.

And then we'd be, and then we got thick as thieves again immediately afterwards.

Wow.