Focus FeaturesYou wouldn't think a sci-fi comedy like The World's End would be so dangerous to make.
Well, it was.
Simon Pegg says he suffered at least one really painful injury.
"I broke my hand during a stunt," he said at the movie's recent Hollywood premiere. "I broke my finger. I bent my finger so far sideways that it snapped the back of my hand. I had a spiral fracture in my fourth metacarpal."
He didn't tell director Edgar Wright about the accident until the end of the day. "We hadn't got the shot yet so I did another six takes on top of the broken hand…I went to the hospital the next day and they made me a little temporary cast. I took it on and off for shooting."
He added with a laugh, "They gave me some meds. It was kind of nice."
Costar Nick Frost will probably think again when he tries to do any fight scenes without any safety protections.
"I had bruised organs at one point," Frost said. "I had to fight a little kid. Well, I thought he was a little kid. It wasn't—he was a 19-year-old man who was like a European kung-fu champion."
Frost turned down a stunt coordinator's offer to wear pads.
"It was fine for the first three or four takes and then after that it really started to hurt," he said. "But I couldn't really back down once I'd taken a position of not having a pad. I didn't want the ‘little kid' to know I was hurt. After about take 10, I could taste blood in my mouth. I couldn't sleep for days. I think I bruised my liver—and not just from the drinking."
The World's End is the story of a group of childhood friends who encounter aliens while trying to complete a pub-crawl they tried to do about 20 years earlier while still in high school.
This is Wright, Pegg and Frost's third film together. They first made the zombie comedy Shuan of the Dead in 2004 followed three years later by Hot Fuzz.
World's costar Rosamund Pike didn't ache as much as the guys after filming, but she admits there was some pain involved. "A few bruises but you expect that," she said. "There's only so far that a soft barstool as opposed to a wooden barstool can protect you because when it's coming at you with a certain amount of force, it's still going to bruise you."