Edgar Wright’s loose “Cornetto” trilogy is coming to an end. In a recent CapeTown Film Fest conversation (can someone please explain what “CapeTown” means? Is that code for nerd gathering?), Wright explained the origin of the ice cream jokes in his trilogy while discussing his latest film in the triptych, “The World’s End.”
The long and short? It’s a go-to hangover cure and a line in “Shaun of The Dead” that expanded when Wright and his cast were given free Cornettos at a screening of his beloved zom-com (you can learn more about it here). That led Wright and Simon Pegg to write in references to Cornetto Ice cream into “Hot Fuzz” in hopes they’d get more free ice cream. “The World’s End,” the green (mint choc-chip flavour) third of the trilogy, has a pretty fantastic cast with Pegg lining up alongside “The Hobbit” star Martin Freeman, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan and Paddy Considine.
The plot plays out thusly: 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite and one of them becomes hell bent on attempting the drinking marathon again. The friend in question is Gary King (Pegg), a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize that the real struggle is for the future, and not just theirs but the whole of humankind’s, so reaching The World’s End pub might be the least of their worries.
But it’s more than just social-realism to it of course. There’s a… sci-fi-ish element teased at in new banner posters from the U.K, an element which will surely become clearer when the marketing starts properly flowing (see the reference in the released log-line about saving “humankind.”) One new photo, that you can see above, has also been released, although it doesn’t really give much more away. “The World’s End” hits theaters on August 23 and the trailer is set to arrive on Wednesday, May 8th.