Edgar Wright Says There’s No SHAUN OF THE DEAD Sequel Coming, and He’s Totally Fine With That
It’s been over twenty years since Shaun of the Dead turned the zombie genre on its head and made household names out of Edgar Wright, Nick Frost, and Simon Pegg, but if you’ve been holding out hope for a sequel, it’s time to let that dream rest in peace.
While promoting his upcoming film The Running Man, Wright was asked by Polygon whether he’d ever considered revisiting Shaun of the Dead. His answer was clear and there’s simply no story left to tell.
“A lot of sequels don’t really earn their keep because all the story has been told in the first movie. […] Shaun goes from being a kind of sad sack to being a hero by the end of the movie. So it’s very difficult to start the next movie when there’s no obvious arc.”
For Wright, Shaun’s journey was complete. He’s not really a “sequel filmmaker” anyway. His closest brush with that world was the Cornetto Trilogy, which included Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, spiritual successors, not direct continuations.
Of course, the zombie genre has always loved a comeback. The Walking Dead universe has spawned endless spinoffs, and Zombieland built itself into a small franchise, complete with a sequel film in 2019. So it’s not crazy that fans would wonder if Shaun of the Dead might get the same treatment.
But Wright isn’t interested. He said he hasn’t been approached “recently” about making a sequel, and he’s perfectly fine with that.
Pegg feels the same way. Back in May, the actor made it clear he has zero interest in a return to the Winchester. He explained:
“A second can end up spoiling the original, because when you watch the original again, you’re thinking, ‘Well they’re gonna go through this other thing.’ The resolution stops having any meaning.”
That doesn’t mean Wright and Pegg haven’t played around with the idea for fun. They’ve joked in the past about silly sequels like one where Shaun and Ed battle vampires in Edinburgh or take on a completely new adventure in an alternate universe. Fun hypotheticals, sure, but that’s as far as they’ll go.
At the end of the day, Shaun of the Dead doesn’t need a sequel. It stands perfectly on its own as a clever, heartfelt, and bloody funny story that helped redefine modern horror comedy.