Neither he, Simon Pegg nor Jessica Hynes had anything to do with AI-aided project

Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright have distanced themselves from a remastered Blu-ray release of Spaced.

Neither they nor co-creator Jessica Hynes had anything to do with the reissue of the cult Channel 4 sitcom for US audiences. 

Wright said it was ‘disheartening’ that he only found out about the project via social media.

In response to a fan’s question about the planned February release, the Shaun Of The Dead and Running Man director said: ‘I had been pushing to do a Blu-ray of Spaced for years, so to find out that someone just went ahead without our involvement is…. a bummer. Not authorised by anyone involved in making the show.’

And Pegg told showbiz industry website Variety: ‘I was completely unaware. We had no say in it. Jess, Edgar and I were heavily involved in all previous releases. I would have rejected the cover art for a start.’

The Blu-Ray release of all three series is also being promoted as ‘from the mind of Edgar Wright’ with Pegg and Hynes not mentioned as writers. 

Label All3Media also bill it as: ‘The series that introduced the world to Simon Pegg (later to co-star alongside Tom Cruise in six Mission Impossible films) as relatable everyman Tim, who must pretend to be in a relationship with Daisy (Jessica Hynes, Death of a Unicorn) to rent the only flat they can afford in North London.’

Wright wrote: ‘I’d like to add that I hate their blurb: "From the mind of Edgar Wright." The show was written by its stars, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes. The fact that Jess, the show’s co-creator, is barely even mentioned is a clear indication of how little they know or care about the show.’

The footage from the original series, which ran from 1999 to 2001, was also remastered with the aid of artificial intelligence. 

Or, as the company put it, ‘using a combination of traditional and proprietary tools in a multi-step process of non-commercial and algorithmic corrections that are additionally enhanced frame by frame by a manual operator’.

The furore is likely to be a PR disaster for the release, with comments from fans including: ‘Spaced is my favourite TV show. I hope all  Spaced ans will reject this abomination’; ‘Love Spaced, but screw that’ and ‘No one who made the show, not even Wright, was involved with the disc's creation and it was "upgraded" with AI? (Throws my initial excitement into the trash).’

Chortle has approached All3 Media for comment.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Finding out about this on for the first time is... disheartening. I had been pushing to do a Blu-Ray of SPACED for years, so to find out that someone just went ahead without our involvement is.... a bummer. Not authorized by anyone involved in making the show. Finding out what happened as we speak...</p>&mdash; edgarwright (@edgarwright) <a href="https://x.com/edgarwright/status/2117015637218533450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2026</a></blockquote>

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Published: 4 Nov 2026