For whatever reason, John Landis has decided to take the last decade or so off from making movies. Maybe he thought that after directing such classics as ANIMAL HOUSE, COMING TO AMERICA, THREE AMIGOS, KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE and THE BLUES BROTHERS, he deserved a bit of a break. And with that resume, I’d be inclined to agree.
Well, he’s gotten his fill of rest and TV projects and is coming back to the big screen with BURKE AND HARE, and he’s even started casting. This latest bit of news on the project comes via Dread Central, who picked up the info at this year’s Monster Mania Convention. The story follows two Irishmen, William Burke and William Hare, who killed seventeen victims and sold their bodies to the Edinburgh Medical College for dissection. It’s a very true, very f*cked up story that happened in Scotland in the 1820’s, and it’s best known as the West Port murders.
So who would be the logical choice to play the lead in such a sinister film? Why the fearsome, bone-chilling Simon Pegg of course! Not sure if the “lead” is BURKE or HARE, but Pegg is reported to be filling one of the two roles, with the other open for a chubby Pegg sidekick perhaps?
I guess that’s the real question at this point, what route is the film going to take? Both Pegg and Landis’s experiences lean heavily toward comedy for the most part, but could the two of them put on their serious faces for a bloody serial killer slasher? Perhaps.