So passionate, that they were willing to work for free for Pegg and Wright if they asked. And Pegg and Wright did. On Shaun of the Dead, they realized they didn't have the cash for zombie hordes, which are kind of a required part of a zombie film, and they hit upon the idea of asking their fans to play zombies for free. They put out a casting call for zombies on the Spaced website, stating up front they wouldn't be able to pay people, and this would just be for the pleasure of appearing as part of an on-screen undead horde. It turned out that 1,100 people wanted to do that.
The production team winnowed down the applicants through an audition process they called Zombie Idol, which the people got into about as much as they did for American Idol -- some of them showed up day after day, again and again. And after all that, their enthusiasm was rewarded with physically grueling, monotonous work. They were cooped up on set for a week for long hours and pretty much just had to stand outside the pub's windows and bang on cue. Wright is "keenly aware" that some of them weren't fans of Spaced after that.
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