In the new issue of Empire, we’re celebrating the career of Edgar Wright – the visionary, playful, genre-twisting British filmmaker behind the Cornetto trilogy, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Baby Driver. While his most recent film saw him steer into crime-thriller territory, delivering rip-roaring car chases and spins on the traditional heist movie, he’s about to venture even further from his comedy roots with his next film. Talking to Empire, Wright revealed his next project is a straight-up psychological horror-thriller – he cites Don’t Look Now and Roman Polanski's Repulsion as influences – set in London, and starring a female lead.

“I realised I had never made a film about central London – specifically Soho, somewhere I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the last 25 years,” Wright tells Empire in the new issue, out 24 January. “With Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead you make movies about places you’ve lived in. This movie is about the London I’ve existed in.” The film will shoot this summer from a screenplay co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns.

Anya Taylor-Joy to Star in Edgar Wright’s Thriller ‘Last Night in Soho’ (EXCLUSIVE)
By JUSTIN KROLL @krolljvar

“Glass” star Anya Taylor-Joy will play one of the leads in Edgar Wright’s next film, “Last Night in Soho,” sources tell Variety.

Wright and “Penny Dreadful” writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns penned the script for the movie — a Focus and Working Title co-production.

Described as a psychological horror-thriller, exact plot details are unknown other then the story being set in London’s Soho district. Production is expected to start this summer in London.

Following the success of the Sony actioner “Baby Driver,” Wright had been weighing several projects, including a sequel to the Ansel Elgort-starrer. He recently told Empire Magazine that “Last Night in Soho” would be his next pic, and that he also had a draft ready for the next installment in the “Baby Driver” series.

Taylor-Joy’s star has been on the rise since breaking out in the Sundance darling “The Witch,” which led to her landing the role in “Split.” The success of that film has since made her one of the more coveted young talents in town, with roles in Fox’s “The New Mutants” and the Netflix series “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.”

She most recently reprised her role as Casey Cooke in the “Split” sequel “Glass,” which has become another hit in the franchise. She is repped by CAA and Troika.

Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho” has rounded out its cast, with veteran actors Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp among the stars signing on for the latest movie from the “Baby Driver” director.

Stamp can currently be seen in Netflix hit “Murder Mystery” with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. Rigg’s recent roles include Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” The British star of stage and screen also picked up the Variety Icon Award in Cannes earlier this year.

The roster of other talent coming on board “Last Night in Soho,” which is being produced by Wright and Working Title Films, includes Rita Tushingham (“Doctor Zhivago”), Michael Ajao (“Attack the Block”) and Synnøve Karlsen (“Medici”).

The new names join the previously announced Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Matt Smith in the film. Production is underway on the London-set psychological thriller, which Wright is directing from a screenplay he co-wrote with “Penny Dreadful” scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Wright are producing.

Plot and character details are being kept tightly under wraps. Shooting in recent days has taken place in the titular Soho district in Central London. Focus Features and Film4 co-financed the film, and Focus and Universal Pictures International will distribute it worldwide.

Stamp is represented by United Agents and Authentic Talent Management. Rigg is represented by Dalzell and Beresford. Tushingham is represented by Milburn Browning Associates, Ajao by United Agents, and Karlsen by Independent Talent and Anonymous Content.

Following the Cornetto Trilogy, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and Baby Driver, Edgar Wright is entering different territory for his sixth feature film (seventh, if we’re counting A Fistful Of Fingers). His upcoming movie Last Night In Soho will be an all-out psychological horror, eschewing the laughs of Shaun Of The Dead for a more hardened genre exploration set in the seedy, neon-lit heart of London. Details on the film’s plot remain under wraps for now – but in Empire’s 2020 Preview Issue, we have an exclusive look at the director on set with one of his leading ladies, Anya Taylor-Joy’s Sandy. And yes, if she looks like her character, Sandy, hails from the 1960s, that’s for a very good reason.



For much of Wright’s movie takes place in the London of the Swinging Sixties; a time period with which his lead character, Thomasin McKenzie’s Eloise, is obsessed and, through a mysterious connection with Taylor-Joy’s character, gets to experience.

“There’s something I have in common with the lead character in that I’m afflicted with nostalgia for a decade I didn’t live in,” Wright tells Empire. “You think about ‘60s London – what would that be like? Imagine if you knew everything you knew now, and went back. I’m taking a premise whereby you have a character who, in a sort of abstract way, gets to travel in time. And the reality of the decade is maybe not what she imagines. It has an element of ‘be careful what you wish for’.” Plenty to ponder there – and of course it makes total sense that Wright is once again twisting his genres, as he’s tended to across the rest of his work.

In theaters this October.

Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller about a young girl, passionate in fashion design, who is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters her idol, a dazzling wannabe singer. But 1960s London is not what it appears, and time seems to fall apart with shady consequences…