Why are three Edgar Wright movies called the “Cornetto trilogy”?
Director Edgar Wright may well be best known in the United States for his 2017 action thriller Baby Driver, as well as the ever-expanding cult following garnered by his film adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. But over in Britain, he’s still known as the guy behind the horror spoof Shaun of the Dead, crime caper Hot Fuzz, and sci-fi comedy The World’s End.
Together, these three films are now commonly referred to as the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy. This is despite the fact that none of the movies share characters or storylines.
In fact, superficially, at least, all they do share apart from the same lead cast members, writers and director – namely Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Wright – is true that each includes a scene involving Cornetto ice cream. And in each film, the Cornetto in the scene is a different flavour. Shaun of the Dead features strawberry Cornetto, while Hot Fuzz sees Pegg and Frost’s characters eating original-flavoured Cornettos, and The World’s End briefly shows a mint Cornetto wrapper blowing in and out of shot.
So, the movies do live up to their trilogy moniker in that sense. But those scenes don’t explain the reason for, or the meaning behind, their inclusion. Or the significance of the Cornetto to the trilogy as a whole.
But where did the Cornetto idea come from?
Firstly, like many of the best ideas, the invention of the “Cornetto trilogy” was a total accident. Actor Nick Frost really is a big fan of Wall’s iconic pre-packaged ice cream cone brand, Cornetto. And anyone who’s indulged in a Cornetto or three in their time couldn’t blame him.
It was this real-life Cornetto love that led Edgar Wright to include a scene in which Frost’s character eats a strawberry Cornetto in Shaun of the Dead. This inadvertent product placement led to the filmmakers receiving free Cornettos at the end of the production.
And so, the trio tried their luck again when reuniting for their next project together. Hot Fuzz wasn’t exactly a follow-up to Shaun of the Dead, though it did contain a similar approach to pastiching genre filmmaking and a couple of the same gags. One of those gags was aimed squarely at more free ice cream.
Pegg and Wright made a point to mention Cornettos at every available opportunity during the film’s promotion. The idea of a trilogy started off as a joke in relation to the Cornetto-eating scene in Hot Fuzz. Pegg first dubbed it “the blood and ice-cream trilogy” in an interview with The Guardian.
But to no avail at that point. No more free Wall’s ice cream was forthcoming after the release of Hot Fuzz. Wright and Pegg weren’t going to give up that easily, though. They had one more film to write.
What is the significance of the “three flavours” of Cornetto ice cream in the films?
As Pegg explained in his original interview, the three flavours of ice cream are part of the joke. In reference to the French-Polish Three Colours film trilogy from the 1990s, he claimed, “It’s like Krzysztof Kieslowski but with confection.”
While the inclusion of a strawberry Cornetto in Shaun of the Dead was initially accidental, it turned out to be a masterstroke in flavour selection, mirroring the blood and gore prominent throughout the film. When it came to choosing the flavour for Hot Fuzz, Pegg and Wright made the conscious decision to go with the blue-wrappered original chocolate flavour. This colour matches the theme of the movie, which is a send-up of police dramas.
And apparently, Pegg was already well ahead of the game back in 2007, predicting “there will be a mint-choc chip in the third film”, a full six years before The World’s End was released. As it turned out, mint green was the ideal colour for a movie about aliens.
They finally got their foot in the door with Wall’s ice cream, too. As Wright told Time Out while promoting The World’s End, “We actually had a formal meeting with them! They’re very pleased with the namecheck.”
So, what started as an in-joke among the writers and actors came to embody this trilogy perfectly. The Cornetto parody of the Three Colours trilogy encapsulates the satirical, genre-blending approach of the movies themselves and serves as a marker for that period in Edgar Wright’s career as a director.