Where can you stream Edgar Wright’s ‘Cornetto’ trilogy? ‘Shaun of the Dead,’ ‘Hot Fuzz’ now on Peacock

Sometimes, all you want to do is go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for things to blow over. Peacock can help you achieve that dream with the first two entries in director Edgar Wright’s famous Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. Both Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) are currently available on the NBCUniversal-owned streaming platform. The World’s End (2013) can be rented or purchased on VOD platforms.

While not connected narratively, all three movies do have a number of elements in common — mainly the acting talents of Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote the scripts for each alongside Wright) and Nick Frost; frenetic editing; mile-a-minute jokes (like the running gag of a character destroying a fence); and the popular frozen treat found throughout the United Kingdom.

RELATED: Last Night in Soho: Edgar Wright & Thomasin McKenzie on the downside of dreaming

Speaking to The Week in 2015, Wright stated that he and Pegg did not set out to make a trilogy while writing Shaun of the Dead, which, of course, parodied the zombie genre by centering its story around a pair of slackers facing down the undead apocalypse.

Now a universally-beloved fan favorite, Shaun helped launch the duo’s respective careers into the stratosphere. Hot Fuzz, a lampoon of action-heavy police films, arrived on the big screen three years later. The World’s End, which is perhaps the strangest of the bunch as a beer-soaked sci-fi thriller, took six years to become a reality.

“We got offers to make sequels to both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and they never really interested us, because we like having these endings where it seems very final, but could hint at some kind of future adventure that you’ll never see.” Wright explained. “There are lots of films I wish stopped at installment number one. I like Back to the Future Part II and Part III enough, but I still like the ending of the first one better. If the 1978 Halloween ended right there, that would be an absolutely classic ending. It already is, but it would be even more of a classic. We liked this idea of making three standalone films and making them — if not like a trilogy — then like a triptych; they’re like three different kind of paintings that go together.”

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The thing about the Cornetto ice cream cones holding it all together started off as a joke:

“Once we had it in both films, a journalist said, ‘Oh, now that you’ve had Cornetto’s in both of your films, are you going to do a trilogy?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it’s going to be like Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy. This is the three flavors Cornetto Trilogy.’ That and the fence-jumping are like the silliest running gags between the films, but themes that run through each of them. They’re all films about growing up, they’re all films about the joys and perils of perpetual adolescents, and they’re all films about an individual vs. a collective.”

For our official ranking of Wright’s genre movies, click here.

Jonesing for more genre-bending comedy? Psych: The Movie, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Death Becomes Her, The Velocipastor, Turbo Kid, Prehysteria, Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness, Mystery Men, and The Hebrew Hammer are also streaming on Peacock!

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