20 facts you might not know about 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World'

The character of Scott Pilgrim began life in a gravel novel series created by Brian Lee O’Malley. Before the first volume of Scott Pilgrim was out, his publisher was already pitching it for a film adaptation. While O’Malley wasn’t sure about his story being turned into a movie, he readily admits he was just happy to get some money as a "starving artist."

Around this time, director Wright had just released his first cult hit, Shaun of the Dead. That movie made a profit on a small budget and became a horror-comedy staple. Wright had read a pre-release copy of Scott Pilgrim and was interested in adapting it. He signed on in 2004.

O’Malley had his input on the movie, but he is not a credited writer on the film. There is another writer credited beyond Wright. Michael Bacall had done a bit of acting and sold two smaller films that got made, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was his first major screenwriting credit. Since then, he’s written for 21 Jump Street and its sequel.

Wright is a lover of film and is not shy about championing well-known or obscure movies. Even knowing that one of his cited inspirations for this movie is strange. That would be 1968’s Danger: Diabolik. If you are familiar with it at all, it’s probably because the Italian movie was the last film screen during the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

There are six volumes to O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. Five of those were out prior to production, but the sixth-and-final volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, was not out yet. While O’Malley did give notes from the sixth volume to Wright and crew, no material from that book was included in the film.

As noted, Wright signed on to work on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in 2004. Sometimes, movies take a little while to complete, but this is a film with an unusually long gestation period. The film was finally released in August of 2010.

Wright knew who he wanted for the roles of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers pretty much right away. The actors he wanted were Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who happened to fill those roles. Wright first considered Cera when he was working on Hot Fuzz, and he said that he wanted Winstead for Ramona two years before she was cast.

Wright and the casting department had an eye for talent. Names such as Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, and Brie Larson are among those in the movie. Kendrick and Plaza were gaining notoriety when the movie came out, but remember how long it took for this movie to be released. When Kendrick was cast, she hadn’t auditioned for Twilight yet, and Plaza had not been on Parks and Recreation.

Chris Evans now known as Captain America, had a lot of fun playing pretentious actor Lucas Lee in the movie. Wright asked Evans to take on the role, and Evans was happy to do so because he was a fan of Wright’s work. That being said, other names were considered for the role. That includes Sebastian Stan, who would go on to play Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ best friend, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Hey, why not have some people pull double duty if they can do it? There is a joke in the film where Scott ends up fighting Lucas’ stunt doubles. Fittingly, the people playing those stunt doubles were Evans’ actual stunt doubles. Art imitates life.

O’Malley is Canadian, and so is Scott Pilgrim. While many movies shoot in Canada, it’s often used to represent somewhere else. Not in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The movie was shot in Toronto with the city getting to play itself. Producer Miles Dale called the film “the biggest movie ever identifiably shot in Toronto.”

Scott plays in a band, and his band, Sex Bob-Omb, is vital to the movie's story. As such, perhaps it isn’t surprising that the movie has quite the soundtrack. Beck and Metric contributed songs to the films, amongst others.

The actors in Sex Bob-Omb actually sing in the movie, and three of them learned to play instruments. Chris Murphy from the band Sloan served as the guitar coach. There are four members of the band, but one of them didn’t have to go through the same musician boot camp. Michael Cera has played bass for many years and has even played bass in a couple of bands.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is indebted to — and in conversation with — pop culture in many ways. The biggest way might be in its video game references. While Scott’s fights with the “Evil Exes” have many fighting video games in them, there are also references to Zelda and Mario games. After all, defeated enemies turn into coins. You can’t explicitly reference Mario much more than that.

Wright had spent his entire career in genre film and genre television before Scott Pilgrim, which is in that same realm. However, he hadn’t really directed fight scenes before — at least not ones as detailed and serious as the ones in this movie. Fortunately, Wright had some friends he could lean on. Namely, he asked directors such as Guillermo Del Toro, Sam Raimi, and Quentin Tarantino for advice. Not a bad group to go to, huh?

In the film's original ending, Scott and Knives Chau were going to end up together. This was even shot and screened. Audiences were divided, and O’Malley was not a fan. Meanwhile, by this point, the final volume of O’Malley’s graphic novel series had come out. In that, Scott and Ramona end up together. Wright decided to rewrite and reshoot the ending of his movie to match the book. This was done three months before the movie was released.

There’s no sugarcoating Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s production at the box office. The movie had a budget of somewhere between $60 and $85 million, depending on where you look. What we do know, though, is that it made $49.3 million at the worldwide box office. No matter how you slice it, Wright’s film lost money.

Audiences may not have come out in droves, but Scott Pilgrim was not a critical flop. It currently has an 82 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Additionally, Kevin Smith was a big fan and said that Tarantino and Jason Reitman were fans of the movie as well. It was also well-received by Japanese video game and anime creators. Japanese culture was a big influence on the film as well.

It’s only fitting that a movie influenced so heavily by video games got a video game of its own. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game is based on the movie and the graphic novels. The game was released in 2010 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and got solid reviews. After disappearing for a bit, a “complete edition” was re-released in 2021 for newer platforms.

Kendrick plays Stacey Pilgrim, and her character naturally wears a name tag that says “Stacey” from her work. This tag actually belongs to a real-life woman named Stacey, whom O’Malley based the character on. Is this terribly interesting? Not particularly, but Kendrick said in the DVD commentary for the film that she wanted this fact added to the IMDb trivia section for the movie, and it was. Now, we’ve added it to our list of trivia as well.