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Edgar Wright can breathe a sigh of relief now Baby Driver, a heist film he was inspired to write more than 20 years ago, finally hits the big screen.

More than once he thought the film would never reach fruition.

“Oh yeah, even as recently as two years ago,” reveals the British writer and director, 43, throwing his head back and laughing.

“That’s the same with all films. Until you’re actually on set, it always feels like it could fall apart at any second.

“It’s funny, I still can’t get my head around that it actually exists as a movie and isn’t something I’ve just been talking about for years. Just having that is kind of strange and amazing.”

The film-maker admits it’s tough to get a movie like Baby Driver made.

“I mean we were with another studio originally and then we changed. Studios, for the most part, are spending their time making things on established brands so making an original movie is tougher than it should be in this day and age.”

Wright was 21 when he was listening to Bellbottoms by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and thought: “This would make a great car chase.”

Fast forward two decades and he’s managed to morph his two great passions, action movies and music, into one stunningly choreographed film.

As Wright’s long-time collaborator, cinematographer Bill Pope has remarked: “It’s a post-modern musical, so there’s not singing and dancing in the street, but the world acts to music.”

Take the scene in which Baby (Ansel Elgort), a quiet, young bloke who’s rarely seen without his sunglasses and ear phones and whose precocious talent for driving makes him the perfect getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey), the kingpin of bank robberies, nips out for coffee.

The pedestrians, cafe workers, kids, dogs all had to be choreographed as Baby travels three blocks.

“It was all [done] in one three-minute take on the first day of the shoot,” remembers Wright who worked with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the “Cornetto trilogy” comprised of Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End.

“It was a good thing to do something so complicated straight off because you really announce to the cast and crew what type of film it’s going to be.”

There’s a hint of La La Land about the beautifully devised sequence. However Elgort, 23, who’s appeared in The Fault In Our Stars and the Divergent films, wasn’t channelling Ryan Gosling but rather John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

“That guy moves so well. I’ve never seen anyone move like that on screen,” exclaims Elgort who had to learn sign language (his foster father, played by CJ Jones, is deaf); parkour, for when Baby’s outrunning the police; as well as stunt driving.

“I learned all the drifting stuff that Baby does but here’s the thing, I don’t like speed that much. I like control and I like doing the tricks but I’ve never been a fan of going really fast,” he says.

Four years prior to the start of the shoot, Wright sat down with editor Paul Machliss and accumulated a playlist of more than 30 songs that would inspire the script – and music was a constant companion on set.

“You needed it to create the tone of the scene because Edgar wrote every single scene to that specific piece of music so it was so important,” says James.

“Also Jamie Foxx came with a boom box and he would DJ in the gaps.”

“Everybody was just musical, [it was] fantastic,” agrees Foxx, 49, who plays the impulsive, gun-slinging Bats, whose suspicions about Baby begin to create a dangerous rift in an until-then smooth-running criminal operation. Wright admitted Bats was “probably my most fun character to write. He is probably the baddest guy in a roster of very bad guys”.

Other characters include former Wall Street-type-turned-outlaw Buddy (Jon Hamm) and his lawless and glamorous partner in crime Darling (Eiza Gonzalez).

Wright had envisioned Hamm in the role of Buddy from the very beginning. The actor was at the first table read back in 2012, and the only one to see it through to production.

“It’s kind of fun to play an unrepentant bad guy,” explains Hamm, who was looking for a change as the TV series Mad Men drew to a close.

“I look for the opposite or at least something different from Don [Draper], who was very clean-cut, buttoned-up, even though he certainly had a dark side. But this opportunity was definitely an example of the change I was looking for.”

Wright ensured the cast and crew had a rehearsal period, in which time they could fine-tune the pace of scenes.

It was about the only time he recalls giving any notes to Kevin Spacey who also appears, an actor Wright refers to as his “pie in the sky choice”.

“I got very excited about him ripping through all this dialogue I’d written,” notes Wright.

“When I was shooting Kevin’s first scene, I did sort of have an out-of-body experience where I stopped watching it as the writer-director and started watching it as an audience member,” he recalls.

“And I was briefly watching the scene and thinking, ‘Oh this is good. Wait, this is my movie’.”

Baby Driver (15) is out in cinemas now.

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Lead actor Ansel Elgort was given one of the Subaru WRXs from the movie as a wrap gift. “I take that and do drifting tricks with it and stuff in my spare time in wet parking lots because I love it. I got the bug.” It’s more than what Lily James, who 
plays Baby’s love interest Debora, received. The actress walked away with a necklace. “It’s a lucky necklace though,” laughs the Downton Abbey actress referring to the wishbone-shaped jewellery 
her character wears. “The costume designer, Courtney Hoffman, was insane. Every character has got such vibe and style,” she notes.