Only yesterday we reported how Simon Pegg had revealed on Twitter that David Tennant was stepping out of his role in John Landis’ Burke & Hare and getting replaced by Andy Serkis (Tennant is working on the piliot for the US TV series, Rex Is Not My Lawyer, instead). Well, it’s now been revealed that Pegg’s got some more new company, as Heat Vision reports that Tom Wilkinson and Isla Fisher will also appear in the film.
The comedy horror is based on the real-life Scottish duo who in the 19th Century went beyond just robbing graves in order to provide medical schools with cadavers (there was an insufficient supply of legal bodies available for dissection at the time, as the only ones officially allowed were executed criminals), and started killing people so they could sell the corpses to a doctor.
Pegg and Serkis will play the two killers, while Isla Fisher will be Pegg’s girlfriend, an actress looking for a patron who might or might not be an accomplice to the murders (in real life she Burke’s mistress was an accomplice, but the film may play with that). Wilkinson meanwhile will be Dr Robert Knox, the man Burke and Hare sold their victims to.
The film starts shooting at the end of the month and marks John Landis’ first big screen adventure since 1998. There’s a lot of anticipation for the film, as it returns Landis to the country and genre that made his name, when An American Werewolf in London became a hit.