Simon Pegg To Star In John Landis' Burke & Hare

John Landis is reportedly on the verge of production on a Burke & Hare film, with Simon Pegg on board to star. Burke and Hare, for those not in the know, were a pair of Irish immigrant murderers in early 19th century Edinburgh who sold on the corpses of their victims to the local medical college.

Now, there's obviously two stars needed for a film about William Burke and William Hare and Pegg has typically come with one co-star in particular in tow so I'm rather curious as to why Mr. Nick Frost wasn't mentioned in the same breath. I'd speculate that the estimable duo might be wanting (or maybe Landis is wanting) to sidestep that whole Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Vegas and Monkey double act image for a while. Having just wrapped Paul, which they wrote as well as star in, I can understand perfectly why they might want a break. Have a look at an illustration of Burke and Hare, though, such as the one on the Royal Mile website, and I'm sure you could quite happily imagine Pegg and Frost taking up the two roles.

I'm over the moon that Landis is approaching the shoot of something, anything, big screen scaled. For the last few years we Landis fans have had to make do with episodes of Masters of Horror, Fear Itself or even Psych, which I've loved – for as long as they lasted. Landis is going to be appearing at next week's five-day Frightfest in London, so I'll do my best to get a hold of him and find out more.

Perhaps the wonderful reception of I Sell the Dead helped out a little here, or perhaps the Pegg factor won a greenlight? I love the idea of Landis approaching something just a little Sweeny Todd. Seeing both Landis and Dante back in the saddle for features, particularly horror features, is very heartening.

source: Dread Central