Last summer, the actor and writer Simon Pegg and the writer-director Edgar Wright holed up for a week at Pegg’s home in Hertfordshire to see if they could break ground on a fourth feature film together. Their previous three, aka the Cornetto Trilogy – Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World’s End (2013) – are all standards on any list of the best British films of the 21st century, and have made both Pegg and Wright bona-fide Hollywood heavyweights. (The pair also created Spaced, one of the all-time great sitcoms, which Pegg wrote and starred in with Jessica Hynes.) But progress on film number four, Pegg admits, wrinkling his nose, was slow.
Was it the pressure of following those previous iconic films? Pegg shakes his head. “Edgar bought his dog, Peter, and Peter was very distracting,” he replies, in his West Country-inflected half-drawl. “I have three dogs; they are schnauzers, too. Well, two now, but I had three then, and they’re quite well-behaved. But Peter’s a little rascal.”
