Comic book adaptations remain Hollywood’s bread and butter, but it still remains an absolute tragedy that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was allowed to sink without a trace at the box office, after earning less than $50 million from multiplexes against an $80 million budget.
Edgar Wright’s first foray into big budget studio fare couldn’t have gone much better from a creative or critical standpoint, but paying audiences simply weren’t interested in checking out the eye-popping, dazzling, and all-round spectacular action adventure laced with video game trappings.
Fortunately, Netflix has stepped in to try and right a major wrong, with anime series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off set to premiere on Nov. 17. Almost the entire band is back together including Michael Cera, Chris Evans, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, and many more besides, and its status as an episodic original hailing from the biggest streaming service in the business ensures it’s going to be watched en masse.
There was no chance a live-action reboot, remake, or sequel would happen given the money lost on the original, but as co-writer BenDavid Grabinski revealed to Empire, it wouldn’t have been financially feasible anyway.
“There’s an extended fight sequence in episodes 2 and 3 that, if this was a live-action movie, would cost more than Avatar. It would be so unbelievably big. And you don’t have to think that way. You’re not limited. If you made a live-action movie of the show that we did, I think it would be the most expensive movie ever, and you’d be shooting for 10 years.”
Live-action’s loss stands to be both animation and Netflix’s gain, then, and the only real question left is whether Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will be able to clear the incredibly high bar set by its spectacular predecessor.