Saturday may have been the big day here at the San Diego Comic-Con, but arguably the best was saved until last as Edgar Wright and Nick Frost unveiled, for the first time anywhere, footage from their eagerly-awaited British action comedy, Hot Fuzz, during a panel on Sunday.
Four brief teaser trailers – five, if you include a spoof reel of footage, comprising close-ups of doors opening, car headlights, and hedgehogs nestling on police uniforms that Wright initially claimed was the edited footage from the just-wrapped film – were shown to a ravenous and receptive audience in Ballroom 20, prefaced by an introduction by the film’s absent star and co-writer, Simon Pegg. Then the footage began, including:
The film’s first teaser proper, featuring plenty of explosions, and John Woo-esque gunplay (one scene sees Pegg, as supercop Nicholas Angel, blown back by an explosion in a doorway; in another, he wields two guns in the manner of Chow Yun-fat). But there’s also a sense of the burgeoning relationship between Angel and Frost’s naïve PC, Danny Butterman, starting with a brief glimpse of an early frostiness (no pun intended), giving way to male bonding with great big guns.
A low-key scene between Angel and Butterman in a pub, where Angel confesses what drove him to be a police officer, and which ends with an unexpected punchline.
A chase scene where a young thug in the sleepy town of Sandford , where Pegg has been posted to become Frost’s partner, nicks something from a shop. Pegg and Frost give chase down narrow village streets… which leads to a visual gag sure to become a classic. If you remember the fence-jumping gag in Shaun Of The Dead (where Simon leapt over a fence, only for it to give way under him), prepare for that to be topped. Not once, but at least six times. (NB: Empire was on set to watch this scene being filmed, and we can confirm that Frost does all his own stunts!)
A hilarious bit where Angel and Butterman, and an old man played by Harry Potter’s David Bradley (aka Filch), open a shed to find a cache of weapons so large it would give Arnie a heart attack. What they also find in there is an old World War II sea mine, which leads to the day’s best sight gag – yes, even better than the fences joke. But, no spoilers here. Well, not much...
But we will say that, even though it’s very early on in the process, Hot Fuzz is shaping up as a worthy successor to Shaun Of The Dead. It opens next February.
Oh, and yes, we really need to update our Hot Fuzz picture...