Picture this: You’re hanging out at your house with a few of your closest friends. The lights are kind of dim and there's a TV playing some random stuff. Everyone's laughing and it's a great time.
That’s exactly what it was like being at the Comic-Con panel for The World's End . Except the close friends were Chris Hardwick (Panel Moderator), Edgar Wright (Director), Simon Pegg (Star) and Nick Frost (Co-Star). And the TV in the background was a huge screen playing various montage tributes to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It was like all of us in the audience -- more than 500 in attendance -- were invited to this dinner party and we were just one of the guys.
The trailer for TWE breaks the plot down clearly: Five friends reunite in their hometown of New Haven to complete the ultimate pub crawl that ends at The World's End, the final pub. Five friends. Five pints. Twelve pubs. But as they begin their epic journey of pints and brotherhood, they figure out everyone in their hometown is some kind of alien/robot hybrid with crazy lights shooting out of their eyes.
In classic Three-Flavours-Cornetto-Trilogy-style, the guys freak out, run around, beat some people up, blow some stuff up and drink lots of beer. As Pegg referred to it, "Shaun of the Dead + Hot Fuzz = The World's End, providing closure to the trilogy ... The theme of all three is perpetual adolescence."
Discussion from the movie quickly jumped to discussion of friendships, other comedians (shout outs given to The Lonely Island, Louis C.K., Parks & Rec and Modern Family), in-flight airline stories and referring to their current project, TWE, as #Lofty (check it on Twitter, I bet it's trending).
Pegg dissected their trilogy as Evolution (zombies), Devolution (cops), Revolution (aliens). "But this one ... It's 'lofty.' Sounds nice, 'lofty,' makes it sound more important than it is. Be sure to describe our movie as #lofty on Twitter after you watch it." Laughing, Frost agreed. "I can't add to Simon's very eloquent answer." But, they did warn -- do not make a drinking game out of TWE, "unless you want to die."
One of the coolest stories shared in the discussion was the explanation of why they refer to these three films as the Cornetto Triology. Wright and Frost took turns sharing. "It was inspired because one morning in college, we were hung-over and just wanted ice cream. So we had a strawberry cornetto. We did it again for 'Shaun.' And at the screening, got free ice cream ... so we thought, hmmm. Name our trilogy after it and get free ice cream forever." Red ice cream for blood (Shaun). Blue ice cream for police (Hot Fuzz). And chocolate mint for aliens (World's End). Genius. Freaking genius.
Though they didn't show any exclusive clips (Wright stated they wanted us to go into this as "blind as possible"), they did share an awesome Cornetto Trilogy techno-mix created by Mike Relm, YouTube mix master.
And when asked about their next project? Pegg seriously answered, "We just finished this one. Our next idea will be in four weeks time ... We need ice cream first."