BABY DRIVER: EDGER WRIGHT’S NEW FILM GRABS A 15 CERTIFICATE…

Some good news for those hoping for a little more peril than in your average 12A action-fest with Edgar Wright’s new film: the Ansel Elgort-starring Baby Driver has been given a straight 15 certificate from our BBFC.

The film was passed uncut at 112 minutes long, and there’ll be some ‘strong language and violence’ heading our way when the film opens here in the summer.

The director of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz hit SXSW last month to unleash his new movie, and had a few words to say about the inspiration behind it.

“I had the germ of this movie rattling around in my head for a long time,” Wright told the audience, before explaining that the seed of the idea began a whopping 22 years ago, when he was listening to the John Spencer Explosion song ‘Bellbottoms’. It’s a track that now features heavily in the finished film.

“I just listened to that song over and over again, and I just thought, ‘That would make a great car chase song.’ I sort of started to visualise the car chase to that song. I didn’t really have what the rest of the idea was. And then I started to think of the idea of a getaway driver that cannot really operate without the right music playing, like a soundtrack.”

Wright also addressed the casting of Elgort – who made a big splash in 2014’s The Fault In Our Stars and has just completed Sacha Gervasi’s November Criminals – as his main character, Baby, and why he ended up choosing him.

“Not just because he is a great actor, and a real charisma, and he’s a big music fan and plays music, but also because he is genuinely young. His presence as a young actor – he was 20 and turned 21 on set – it works into the premise of the movie, as you have this young apprentice to this gang. Within the movie, what it becomes about is he is on the bubble about whether he wants to be involved in this life or not. So at the start of the movie, the character of Baby is someone who is working within a gang, but does not necessarily see himself as part of the gang. So the question of the movie is, ‘can you be involved in crime without being a criminal?’ The answer is no. As you will discover over 130 minutes.”

Directed and written by Edgar Wright. With Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx. Kevin Spacey, Jon Bernthal and Eiza González.

We’re very much looking foward to this driving all over our screens come 2017.