The World's End
Good food. Fine ales. Total annihilation.
The World's End (2013)
Production
Budget
$20 000 000
Revenue
$46 089 287
Director
Scenario
Composer
Producer
Tim Bevan
Actors
Simon Pegg
Gary King
Nick Frost
Andrew Knightley
Paddy Considine
Steven Prince
Martin Freeman
Oliver Chamberlain
Eddie Marsan
Peter Page
Rosamund Pike
Sam Chamberlain
David Bradley
Basil
Pierce Brosnan
Guy Shepherd
Short description
The World's End follows five childhood friends who reunite after twenty years to attempt a pub crawl they failed to finish in their youth. Gary King, a man in his forties who has never settled into adult life, pushes his reluctant friends to return to their hometown and work their way through twelve pubs, ending at the legendary World's End. As they drink their way through the town, they discover that something far stranger than old grudges awaits them, and their personal reunion becomes tangled with a threat to humanity itself.
Edgar Wright directed and co-wrote the film with Simon Pegg, and it arrived in 2013 as the fifth feature he directed, following Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Pegg plays Gary King alongside Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan and Rosamund Pike. The film was produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Nira Park. Made for about 20 million dollars, it took in roughly 46 million dollars worldwide.
Audience reactions were solid rather than enthusiastic: it holds a 6.9 rating on IMDb from around 312,000 votes and a 6.8 on TMDB from about 6,000 votes, while critics gave it a noticeably warmer 7.5 from 244 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The irony of visiting several pubs in Letchworth is that, until 1995, the town had only four pubs and two hotel bars, which was remarkably few for a British town with a population of 30,000. Even by 2011, the situation hadn’t changed much, with the population reaching 37,000 and the number of pubs increasing to seven, while the hotel still had only one bar.
- Throughout the film, some interference and noise are mixed into the background music. This is a hint at the true origin of the alien invaders (the network).
- The dialogue at the end of the prologue ("We want to be free...") is a part of the song "Loaded" by Primal Scream. The original source of the dialogue is the film "The Wild Angels" (1966).
- Besides the appearance of ice cream, all films in the "Cornetto Trilogy" feature a scene where a character attempts to jump over a fence.
- This is the second film in the unofficial trilogy to feature a former James Bond (Timothy Dalton appeared in “Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and the first to feature a Bond girl (Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike previously worked together in “Die Another Day,” 2002).
- The majority of the film was shot in Letchworth Garden City, with some additional filming taking place in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Filming took place in local pubs The Tavern, The Colonade, and The Three Magnets. The pub that is called The World's End in the film is actually called The Gardeners Arms and is located on Wilbury Hills Road in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire. Other locations used during filming include the Broadway cinema, which was renamed The Mermaid, and Letchworth railway station, named The Hole In The Wall.
- The fruit machine in the “The King’s Head” pub sounds the same as the fruit machines from the films “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Hot Fuzz” (2007).
- The poster for the film "Armageddon" (2013) is a modified poster for the not-so-popular film "The End of the World" (1977), whose main idea was the creation of doubles by aliens with the goal of conquering the world.
- The character of Nick Frost works at the law firm "Buckingham Davis Knightly". Buckingham is the real surname of Simon Pegg.
- The surnames of the main characters have a "royal" or "courtly" origin: Gary King (king – “king”), Andy Knightly (knightly – “knightly”), Peter Page (page – “page”), Steven Prince, and Oliver Chamberlain.
- All the parking spaces in the town of Newton-Haven are filled with Amperas Vauxhall cars of various colors, thereby emphasizing the fundamental uniformity that has gripped the town.
- In the scene where he knocks an alien invader out of a school bully, Pete (Eddie Marsan) grabs a tree branch and begins hitting the hero on the back. This scene is almost identical to the famous scene with John Cleese from the series “Fawlty Towers” (1975–1979). Darren Boyd, who played the school bully, previously played Cleese in the comedy “The Flying Circus” (2011).
- Gary tells the guys: "I'm free to do what I want, whenever I want." This is a line from the song "I'm Free" by Soup Dragons, which plays earlier in the film.
- Each of the twelve bar names in the film hints at an event that takes place there.
- The pubs featured in the film were renamed. In Welwyn Garden City, the pub The Cork was temporarily renamed The Famous Cock. The Parkway Bar became The Cross Hands. The Doctors Tonic was transformed into The Old Familiar, and the pub The Peartree was named The First Post.
- If you look closely at the interior of each pub, you can notice the pub number corresponding to the order in which the heroes visited them.
- The pub "The King's Head" is mentioned in the film "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) as one of the establishments where friends will drown their sorrows.
- The girl sitting next to Gary in the focus group was played by Nicola Cunningham. She previously appeared in “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) as Blood Mary (the zombie girl who appears in Shaun and Ed’s garden).
- As this is the final installment in the unofficial "Cornetto Trilogy," the characters eat mint chocolate chip ice cream (judging by the green wrappers). According to Edgar Wright, the green color symbolizes science fiction and extraterrestrial elements, which are a key motif in the film. In the other films of Wright's trilogy, it was red and strawberry flavor ("Shaun of the Dead," 2004), symbolizing blood and zombies, and also blue and vanilla flavor ("Hot Fuzz," 2007), symbolizing the police.
- The flashback footage at the beginning of the film was shot in 16mm, then up to the appearance of the robots it's “Super-35” with a three-perf step, and then up to the final scenes the Panavision anamorphic format with a four-perf step was used. The Super-35 format was used again in the final scene.
- The sign for the pub “The King’s Head” depicts Simon Pegg, the screenwriter and actor of the film, in the role of the king.
- The couple Oliver shows the house to at the beginning of the film is the same couple shown the house to at the end of the film.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
