Some directors are more prolific than others: some knock out a movie a year, resulting in decidedly mixed quality (*cough* Woody Allen). Others make a couple of movies a decade if you’re lucky. Still others fall somewhere in between, taking their time between projects and only going before cameras when they’re ready. Edgar Wright is one such filmmaker: since 2004, he’s released a film every three years, with "Shaun Of The Dead" that year, "Hot Fuzz" in 2007, "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" in 2010, and "The World’s End" in 2013.
Three years can feel like a big gap, and one of the reasons we were excited about his rendition of the Marvel superhero "Ant-Man" was that it meant that only two years would pass in between Wright pictures. But the filmmaker departed the project earlier this past summer, which seemed to doom us to an even longer wait than usual. Fortunately, something’s arrived this morning to tide us over: the filmmaker’s first music video in over a decade.
The filmmaker made a number of videos pre-‘Shaun’ (the last of which was for Charlotte Hatherley‘s "Bastardo"), but he has returned to the form for this new promo for the latest collaboration between Pharrell Williams and Daft Punk. The clip sees Wright getting his Zhang Yimou on, with Williams and the french robots performing in an autumnal woodland accompanied by dancers in flowing fabrics. It’s arguably the least comic thing that Wright’s ever made (and lets him scratch the musical itch he’s long mentioned), but there’s still a playfulness in the clip that’s very much the filmmakers’ trademark. Nevertheless, it seems to indicate what we’ve guessed: that post-Cornetto and the "Ant-Man" near miss, we could be heading towards a new phase of the director’s career, a more mature departure from his usual visual style. Watch it below.
As for that next project, the front-runner appears to be secretive "collision of crime, action, music and sound" project "Baby Driver," but he’s also been linked to an adaptation of the young adult novel "Grasshopper Jungle," and even less definitively to a Russ Meyer/Roger Ebert biopic "Russ & Roger Go Beyond." He’s still attached to the Johnny Depp-starring reboot of "The Night Stalker," and a mysterious J.J. Abrams-produced project called "Collider," as well as a low-budget horror picture at Film4.