In the U.K., Joe Cornish is best known as the co-star, along with Adam Buxton, of “The Adam & Joe Show,” both the studenty comedy TV show of the late 90s, and the excellent radio show, currently airing on BBC6Music. Both Cornish and Buxton are good friends of Edgar Wright (Buxton plays the journalist splattered by a chunk of church roof in “Hot Fuzz”), and internationally, Cornish is known as Wright’s collaborator on the scripts for Marvel adaptation “Ant-Man,” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.”
He’s been developing a script with Wright’s producing partner, Nira Park, for some time, and it now looks like it’s ready to roll – “Attack the Block” will go before cameras in February next year, thanks to a partnership between Park’s company Big Talk Productions, and British distributor Optimum Releasing. The movie follows a group of ‘hoodies’ (for non-U.K. readers, hoodies is a term for misbehaving youths in hooded tops, who the media believe are responsible for a wave of muggings) who are interrupted during a street robbery by a flying saucer crash, and an alien attack. Killing their extra-terrestrial visitor, they return to the housing estate, only to discover that there are more aliens out there…
This definitely seems along the same lines as “Shaun of the Dead,” but Cornish should bring a different vibe to this, and we hear really great things about the script (although we’re yet to find a copy…). SlashFilm, who found the synopsis above, also speculates that Nick Frost may be part of the movie, after the actor announced on his Twitter feed that he was meeting with Joe Cornish, which seems like a good call. The movie will be launched properly at the American Film Market next week, so hopefully some more concrete details will emerge then.
In related news, Optimum, who are backing “Attack the Block,” have begun filming on their first production, the remake of Graham Greene’s “Brighton Rock,” starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren, and you can see the first shot from the set above, and go to ohnotheydidnt to check out more.
