Edgar Wright: 'Casino Royale' Is How You Correctly Reboot A Franchise

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As Hollywood continues to delve deeper into an age of endless IP and franchise filmmaking, the art of becoming and remaining a unique director is becoming increasingly difficult.

Take Chloe Zhao, for example: Eternals — the wildly heady sci-fi epic that served as the director’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Nomadland — currently has a 63% critic score, a number that represents both the lowest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and her filmography at large. Zhao tried to, and succeeded in, bringing her own sensibilities to a wider audience, and the very critics who’ve spent years praising her are now largely rejecting her Marvel film for those very same things. Regardless of who you are, whether justified or not, making your creative eccentricities mainstream remains a difficult task. Unless, of course, you’re a filmmaker like Edgar Wright, who has someone made his originality his own personal IP.

When you see an Edgar Wright film, you simultaneously know what to expect while also never seeing it coming. That was true when he burst onto the scene with the delightfully irreverent Shaun of the Dead and it remains true to this day with his latest project, Last Night In Soho. In a Hollywood landscape that’s increasingly reliant on the ideas of others, Wright continues to tell his own stories.

Still, just because Wright hasn’t (yet) participated in franchise filmmaking doesn’t mean he never will.

“I would never be so dumb to say that I’d never do a franchise movie. I’ve said that on record, it’s not like I ever said I’d never do one,” Wright told BroBible’s Post-Credit Podcast.

“And when it’s announced in some trade magazine that I am doing one, everyone will say ‘Edgar, you lied!You said you’d never do a franchise movie!’ I never said that. The thing is, I really believe that studios have to make more original films. And I don’t mean original standalone films, but even original films that could become franchises. What’s strange to me is that there seems to be this shortsightedness that nobody seems to understand that in 1977, Star Wars was an original screenplay, or that in 1979, Alien was an original screenplay, or that in 1984, Terminator was an original screenplay. So it’s like, why wouldn’t you take more risks on things that *could* go beyond?”

All that said, Wright still believes there are room for reboots when they actually serve to reinvent the character and attempt to do something different, with Casino Royale being the first example that came to mind:

“It’s fine when there’s a great reinvention of something. And when people do reinvent a franchise — like when the first Daniel Craig Bond came out — they’re doing something radically different as a reboot, it’s very interesting to watch,” Wright said.

“And that I think is fair and was a great example of that. I just feel like some of these things could take a break. And it’s not like they don’t need to come back, but I don’t need one every two years.”

Wright’s unyielding commitment to originality will continue when Last Night In Soho — which stars Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, and Diana Rigg — hits theaters in the United States on Friday, October 29. And make sure to keep an eye out for our full interview with Edgar, which will also drop on Friday.