You've Got Red on You: How Shaun of the Dead Was Brought to Life

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You've Got Red On You details the previously untold story of 2004's Shaun Of The Dead, the hilarious, terrifying horror-comedy whose fan base continues to grow and grow. After consulting dozens of the people involved in the creation of the film, author Clark Collis reveals how a group of friends overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to make a movie that would take bites out of both the UK and the US box office before ascending to the status of bona fide comedy classic.

The pair regarded Shaun of the Dead not as a parody of Romero’s films but as a love letter to them, with the humour coming from the collision of this apocalyptic scenario with humdrum London life. “I have, for many years, reiterated the fact that every zombie film, they’ve all stolen from George Romero,” says Pegg. “The cannibalistic viral zombie was entirely his idea, which was so brilliant and scary, and the most contemporary classic monster. They stand alongside vampires and werewolves, but those things have been around for hundreds of years. George came up with this in 1968.”How did a low-budget British movie about Londoners battling zombies in a pub become a beloved global pop culture phenomenon? I was a huge fan of Shaun of the Dead. It was my favourite movie of that year. Their jokes were like perfectly placed time bombs.”— Quentin Tarantino

The intricately rendered and definitive story behind the creation of Edgar Wright’s cinematic rom-zom-com tour-de-gore’s that is Shaun of the Dead, recounted with affection by the one and only Clark Collis."— The Nun director Corin Hardy Smooth Operator” singer Sade Adu signed off on her band’s 1984 hit album Diamond Life being one of the albums Shaun and Ed throw at a pair of zombies which appear in their garden. Wright remembers, “It’s a tough thing to get someone on board [by] saying, ‘We want to trash your album!’…Sade, who I’ve never met, signed her release and was down for it. To me, she’s the coolest person ever. It’s like, you don’t know us from Adam, we actually break your record in the shot, and you let us clear your likeness. That’s amazing.” A really entertaining read and, if you’re a fan of the film, very illuminating on the struggles to not only get it made, but also to have the film be taken seriously. If you’ve ever wanted to make a movie, you’ll learn a lot in You’ve Got Red on You.”— Shaun of the Dead co-writer/director Edgar Wright Entertainment Weeklysenior writer Collis’ debut nonfiction work tells the story of how a much-beloved zombie movie made its way to the big screen.

Sade did the filmmakers a big favor

An exemplary movie retrospective, one which combines an astonishing amount of research with a real flair for storytelling. 5/5 stars."— SFX