What "Crazy" Project Is Edgar Wright Making After 'Baby Driver'?
Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is currently making the press rounds promoting his new music-driven action thriller Baby Driver, which comes out next week. But earlier this month, he dropped a tantalizing hint in an interview about a "crazy" new project he has coming up. What could this mystery Edgar Wright project be?
During an interview with CNET, the interviewer asked the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World director if he'd be interested in making a Star Wars movie:
"I guess so, yeah. Yeah. I have something crazy, but I can't tell you."
When the interviewer pressed him to reveal more ("you can tell us"), Wright laughed but remained firm:
"No, I really can't. You'll see at Christmas."
Hmm. Could that be a veiled hint that Wright is secretly working on a new Star Wars movie? After all, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was reportedly spotted at a screening of Baby Driver earlier this week.
Turns out the answer is "no." Wright took to Twitter and shot down the speculation before it could gain too much of a foothold online.
cc: @SavedYouAClick No.
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) June 9, 2017
So with the Star Wars option off the table, what else could he have been talking about?
Wright has an adaptation of The Grasshopper Jungle brewing at New Regency, but we already knew that, so it wouldn't make much sense for him to be teasing it as some sort of reveal. Maybe he's hinting at a sequel to Hot Fuzz, the second entry in his Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy? The director recently addressed that possibility, but seemed lukewarm about the idea, so I don't think it's that, either.
I think the most likely option may be something that was hinted at by a different filmmaker altogether. You may remember that Kevin Smith (Clerks) is working on a TV series adaptation of the 1984 cult movie favorite The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, and last year, Smith claimed he was going to be reaching out to some big name directors to helm episodes of the show:
"I wanna get the people who loved it as much as me, so people like Richard Kelly, Edgar Wright, I'm gonna reach out to Quentin Tarantino, see if they'll direct an episode. 'Here's a chunk of change, a 50-page script, eight days... go make your section.' That'd be fun."
I can totally see Wright returning to the world of television for something like that because A) he's apparently a big fan of the movie, and B) an episode of TV has the added benefit of not being a huge commitment that would eat up years of his time. Plus, Wright kicked this whole thing off by teasing "something crazy" – he never specified it was a new film.
Then again, there's always the outside chance that Wright could be hinting at that Simon & Garfunkel cinematic universe that began as a joke on Twitter last month. As we've seen with the Rihanna/Lupita Nyong'o movie that came to life through the sheer power of Twitter suggestion, stranger things have happened.
Update: I somehow missed the fact that Kevin Smith left the Buckaroo Bonzai show back in November, and the series itself is embroiled in a legal battle that leaves its existence uncertain, so directing an episode of the show is almost certainly not what Wright was teasing here. I apologize for the error.