When it was released in 2010, Edgar Wright‘s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was considered a disappointment. It grossed less than $50 million at the box office, on a reported production budget of $85 million. And the reviews, while mostly positive, were less than enthusiastically so.
In hindsight, though, Wright’s adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s beloved 2000s series of graphic novels was simply ahead of its time. Its mash-up of genre and tone, and its ability to make absurd comic book imagery work in live-action, has earned it an ever-increasing cult following. And where star Michael Cera was arguably the only name actor at the time of its release, many of his co-stars have gone on to bigger fame in the 13 years since, including Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin, Aubrey Plaza, and Anna Kendrick.
So when it came time to assemble a voice cast for Netflix‘s new anime adaptation Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, O’Malley and co-creator BenDavid Grabinski wanted the film’s actors, but were worried they couldn’t get them back. And they agreed that if they couldn’t get everyone, they would have to start over from scratch, rather than mixing old voices with new ones. Fortunately, they had several things working in their favor, including Edgar Wright being attached as an executive producer, and the cast still being on an email chain with him ever since the movie was made.
It’s very hard to talk in advance about Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, since the show features some significant new material that’s not in the movie or the comics. We’ll have a lengthy Q&A with O’Malley and Grabinski about all of that on Monday. What I can say is that it’s a delight for anyone who cares about the source material. And in the meantime, Wright had a lot to say about the movie’s disappointing reception at the time, staying in touch with the cast for all these years, and how he got them all to sign up for one more go-around as Scott, Wallace, Kim, Gideon, and the rest.
Given how the movie originally did at the box office, are you surprised it’s built up this legacy over the years?
When it came out, it didn’t do as well as anybody was hoping. I don’t try and use certain words, so I don’t use the F-word [flop] or the B-word [bomb]. It’s a horrible thing to read that. I think that weekend, I was smart enough to think, Do not read any of the trades! It will only upset you! But we were still doing press for the movie, for the London premiere the next week. And even though it was a bummer, not doing as well as we all wanted it to, the thing that kept me going and staved off the disappointment is that we were all really proud of the movie. What happens sometimes, if a film doesn’t do well, people run for the hills. There’s one actor, I will not say who, but it really made me laugh. I asked him about a film he had coming out, and he shook his head and goes, “I’m going out of town the weekend that opens.” I was like, “Whoa!” But I knew everybody was really proud of [this]. And we knew, from some of the screenings we had, it’s not about whether there’s an audience out there for the movie. It’s about how to reach them. Maybe a film that has more than one thing going on, you always have to bring a film down to an elevator pitch. And Scott Pilgrim was always difficult to describe in one sentence. At the junkets, people would ask me how to describe the movie, and I would always say, “Well, it’s action/romance/comedy/martial arts.” And as soon as I said more than two genres, I had a voice in my head saying, BZZZT! Pick two! Anything more than two sounds like there’s some kind of strange flop sweat happening. So I would try to say, “Oh, it’s a comedy-action film,” because that was something people could get their heads around.
(L to R) The League of Evil Exes Ken Katayanagi (Shota Saito), Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), Kyle Katayanagi (Keita Saito), Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), and Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman) in ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.’
But I knew the cast were really happy. And there was a thing that happened in London. We went to Ireland, did press, and then were in London. There were all these trade articles, asking, “Scott Pilgrim: What went wrong?” Or, “Comic-Con buzz fails to carry over into mainstream!” I told my girlfriend at the time, “Before the premiere, I think I should gather the cast together and say a little speech. Like, ‘I know it didn’t do that well, but I’m so proud of the movie, I’m so proud of you all in it, and let’s just have a really nice time tonight.” This was my plan. I gathered everyone into a bar at the Soho Hotel. Kieran and Ellen [Wong] and Michael and Mary [Elizabeth Winstead] were all there, all were like totally carefree, and fucking around, and making each other laugh, and having a whale of a time. I had my speech prepared, and I was like, Ah, they’re fine! I never actually said it to them. The London premiere was so fun, and was like a strange thing where, it was the opposite of what happens in films. Usually, something doesn’t go well, and any further press is being awake. Everyone was still having a blast. If you look at the red carpet photos from London, everybody is quite giddy, and it was a funny night.
And then what happened after that was the opposite of the cast running from the hills. When we did a DVD press tour, which is unheard of with the cast, and screenings. When it started playing midnights at the New Beverly, quite frequently we would go down, with the entire cast. Sometimes, it would be five of us. Sometimes, it would be eight of us. One night, pretty much everybody in the movie was onstage. It was this strange thing where, I think we felt like, we just have to keep getting the word out. We’re proud of it, and we know the people who have seen it are really passionate about it. So I think that was the thing. We just kept promoting it ourselves.
The cast clearly loved the movie. So when Bryan and BenDavid asked you to help get them all back for this, what did you have to do?
Originally, everybody involved, including Bryan, BenDavid, two of our other producers, Adam Siegel and Jared LeBoff, assumed that maybe we wouldn’t get everybody back. But I was like, “When the time is right, I’m willing to ask that question.” Because obviously, you’ve got a cast where everybody has gone on to great successes. And once all the scripts were written, and we weren’t presenting a theoretical idea, I wrote an email to all the cast. The thing is, we had also stayed in touch, not just in person as friends, but we had this group email going since 2010. It would mostly be about things to do with the movie, and then would become running jokes and memes. So I sent this email, from July 2022, and the subject heading is: “Scott Pilgrim: To Be Continued!”
[Wright begins reading the email]
“Hey all,
I have some happy news. We’ve been talking about this for years now. So you may have already heard something about it, but we’re going to do a Scott Pilgrim anime show for Netflix, and it’s just been greenlit. Bryan Lee O’Malley has co-written all-new scripts with BenDavid Grabinski. They are both a faithful adaptation but also something different — surprising and very fun. I think they are really special scripts. I’m sure you will, too. Of course, having all of you [the greatest cast of all time*], and though it would be a dream and mean a tremendous amount to everyone, it goes without saying, but it’s worth saying. Jared will follow up with a bunch more info, but I’m jazzed by what I’ve seen so far, and I think it will be an awesome and lovely continuation of this wonderful book.
Over to you, Jared.
Edgar
(*) Yes, better than The Godfather.”
That was the email. And within three hours, everybody had replied. It was just a very sweet thing. As with the press tour and doing midnights and staying in touch, it was a very strong bond with a cast. Sometimes, you do films, and you never see those actors ever again, but we always stayed in touch. It was just a matter of, when the time was right, to send the email. We literally talked about sending the email two years before I did.
(L to R) Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) in ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.’
The show features some new material that’s significantly different from anything you did in the film. How did you feel about that?
I think that’s the raison d’etre. As with anything, if the original creator is excited about something, you pay attention. I remember reading the first episode script, and I thought it was fucking hilarious. It’s like a slight funhouse-mirror version, and self-reflexive replay of events, I thought it was really fun. And I love Bryan’s writing, so I was just so happy to hear his voice. It just made me feel so warm inside. The first thing I said to him after the script was, “You should write more screenplays, Bryan!”
Every email or text chain I’ve ever been on, people start to develop defined roles within the group: the one who’s always posting memes, or the one who replies so rarely that everyone really pays attention when they do. Is that at all how the dynamic here has worked?
I think it’s more this long-running, running jokes. And snark. I guess it’s a contest of who’s the most sarcastic: Michael Cera or Kieran Culkin? Michael is the king of fucking deadpan humor. You get an email from him and you read it in his voice, and you get an email from Kieran, and you read it in his voice. I don’t think that anything serious about the group changed since 2010. The only time it got serious again was when we were going to do the [charity table read in 2020].
Thanks for speaking with me.
The thing with sequels and stuff is, don’t give them what they want. Give them what they need. And I think people are really going to be surprised and enjoy it.
All eight episodes of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off begin streaming November 17 on Netflix.
