Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which came out 10 years ago this August, had a strong reception at San Diego Comic-Con and received glowing reviews from critics, but the third best comic book movie of the 2010s was a dud at the box office. It made $48.1 million (including only $10.5 million during its opening weekend) on a reported $60 million-plus budget, causing Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to tweet, “World: 1, Scott Pilgrim: 0.” Edgar Wright has not forgotten this since-deleted burn.
“It opened the same weekend as The Expendables and Eat Pray Love. I remember getting an email from Marc Platt, one of the film’s producers, on the Friday asking Universal to put more into the spend and predicting doom for the weekend. And I thought — naively — I thought, Well, it’s only Friday morning, how could they know? They know,” the director and co-writer told Entertainment Weekly in a new oral history about Scott Pilgrim. “It opened at number five.” The low box office gross became a punchline, Wright remembers, including the aforementioned MacFarlane tweet:
“I’ve never liked Seth MacFarlane, because that weekend he tweeted [‘World: 1, Scott Pilgrim: 0’]. I was like, f*ck you. And then I lay in wait until 8 Million Ways to Die in the West came out, or whatever it was called [Ed. Note: close enough, it was A Million Ways to Die in the West], and I rubbed my hands with glee. I didn’t tweet anything because I’m not a total monster [laughter]”
That’s impressive restraint from Wright, because while A Million Ways to Die in the West made more money, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a million times better. If only Million Ways star Charlize Theron was in Scott Pilgrim. Every other famous person we love (Chris Evans, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, Brie Larson, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Ellen Wong, Alison Pill, Mae Whitman, Bill Hader, etc.) was.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)