GREAT SCOTT!

DIRECTOR EDGAR WRIGHT AND STAR MICHAEL CERA RETURN TO AN OLD SAVE POINT TO REMINISCE ABOUT 10 YEARS OF SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD. CONTINUE?

- SIMON BLAND

I WAS AT A PRE-SCREENING OF SHAUN OF THE Dead and two of the film’s producers came up to me and said, ‘We have your next movie’,” remembers director Edgar Wright. “They had the rights to this new comic book and thought it was right up my alley – they said it was like a cross between John Hughes and Kill Bill.”

It’s been a decade since Wright crossed paths with Scott Pilgrim, the slacker hero of Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, which follows a guy forced to battle his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes. The British director behind cult series Spaced had already taken a bite out of the big screen with 2004’s rom-zom-com, swiftly followed by 2007’s police actioner Hot Fuzz. However, with a new decade looming, he was keen to move into something more ambitious.

“I loved the premise, Bryan’s artwork and his way of writing young characters and their dialogue,” Wright tells SFX, as Scott Pilgrim Vs The World turns 10. “There was also this overriding idea that was in some of my other work: of characters relating to their own emotional struggles through the pop culture they consume,” he adds. “Scott’s playing his life like it’s a videogame, and ultimately has to learn that you can’t treat people like they’re shiny objects on your solipsistic quest. That really appealed to me.”