‘They’ve gone feral’ … the extras move in. It was a case of keep your friends close but your zombie enemies closer.
Zombie spend money and trash it full#
They went through full makeup and eventually became teenage zombies. The only way we could stop them was by giving them parts.
He still managed to look dashing.Ī bunch of kids were unhappy about us filming on their estate.
Bill Nighy said yes immediately but, being a dapper dresser, wasn’t too impressed by his character’s beige, suburban wardrobe. She sent us a note saying she wanted to be Nick, because he had funnier lines. Helen Mirren turned down the part of Barbara, Shaun’s mother. “Hunky Dory? Ziggy Stardust? The Labyrinth Soundtrack!” In the end, we went with Prince because we thought it was funnier: “Purple Rain? Sign O’ the Times? The Batman Soundtrack! Throw it!” We were going to have a David Bowie joke in the part where they’re deciding which records to throw at the zombies. She said we could trash Diamond Life without hesitation. Simon sent a nice letter to Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits asking if we could use Brothers in Arms, but it came to nothing. We wrote to people asking if would be OK for us to trash their records. I needed to record some zombie sounds so one lunchtime I stood in the middle of the pub and asked them all to attack me. When we eventually involved them properly, they had this electric energy: a pure, crazed hysteria. They had to stand outside The Winchester, the pub where our heroes take refuge, banging on the windows and not doing much else really.
Our zombies spent a week cooped up on set.