Most of the time, the comic book adaptations that tend to bomb at the box office are among the worst the genre has to offer; with Catwoman, Dark Phoenix, Morbius, The New Mutants, and Fant4stic only a few of many examples. On the other side of the coin, though, greatness can often crash and burn at the multiplex, with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World the standout.
Edgar Wright made the ambitious leap to Hollywood with an $80 million budget and an array of visually dazzling tricks and techniques in tow, only to see the critically-acclaimed coming-of-age adventure lose a fortune. Earning less than $50 million from theaters, Scott Pilgrim deserved much better, especially when you consider how popular it remains to this day.
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 82 percent score and packing an 84 percent audience approval rating from upwards of 100,000 votes, it’s not insane to suggest that it’s the single greatest motion picture the medium has ever produced that ended up slipping through the cracks and being completely ignored by paying customers and the general public at large.
One major positive is that Netflix is getting the entire band back together for an animated series, which you’d assume is the catalyst behind the live-action version’s newfound surge on streaming. Per FlixPatrol, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World hasn’t just notched a Top 10 spot in multiple nations on HBO Max, but it’s also made an appearance on the iTunes worldwide rankings, too.
Without those pesky box office dollars to worry about, we can only hope that Netflix’s new take on the material draws in the level of eyeballs its predecessor should have found, but ultimately didn’t.