Michael Cera Revived the Scott Pilgrim Cast Email Chain After a Nine-Year Break; Chris E

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As fate would have it, the decades-old “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” cast email chain was randomly revived by Michael Cera just before Netflix ordered its new “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” anime series, featuring the original film cast in voice roles. Franchise creator Bryan Lee O’Malley revealed the coincidence in a chat with Entertainment Weekly, noting that the long-dormant email chain’s revival was so random that cast member Chris Evans hilariously called out Cera.

“The cast have spoken about this email chain a lot but there’s one detail that I don’t think anyone has mentioned,” O’Malley said. “We were exchanging emails when the movie was coming out and then this thread went dormant for about nine years. Then, before this anime was even on the docket, Michael Cera responded to a meme someone had sent as if no time had passed. He just said, ‘Oh, that’s funny.’ Chris Evans responded like, ‘Michael, what the fuck are you doing responding to this email from nine years ago?’ And then we all started chatting again.”

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O’Malley added, “We were all pretty young when we made the movie. We all felt like family and I think we have ever since.”

Cera’s decision to revive the “Scott Pilgrim” cast email chain paid off, as the group started talking again more regularly. Now they’re fully back together again for Netflix’s “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” co-created by O’Malley and BenDavid Grabinski. The original film, directed by Edgar Wright, starred the likes of Cera, Evans, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Alison Pill, Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman. They are all back to voice their roles in the anime series, which O’Malley asked them to do in a letter.

“Everyone just very kindly and very promptly said yes,” he said.

According to Grabinski, the anime has even more epic set pieces than the film.

“We would write a fight scene and encourage them to do whatever they wanted with it,” he said about working with the animators. “Next thing you know, you would get thousands of storyboards that would blow our mind with stuff that we never expected, and we would start rewriting based on their boards. Everything just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Each one of these episodes, if they were live action, would cost $100 million.”

“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” is set to stream on Netflix starting Nov. 17.

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