20 Things You Didn't Know About Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
12. In A Reversal Of Its Own Plot, It Was Almost Shot In New York Instead Of Toronto
In the scenes on location for Lucas Lee's movie there is an Empire State Building backdrop, a joke about how Toronto is in constant use as a film set but only to play more iconic American cities, never itself.
It's a trend which makes Scott Pilgrim a bit of a rarity in actually making a film not just in Toronto, but also about Toronto. If the executives at Universal had had their way, however, then things could have gone in the opposite direction and seen this Toronto-based comic getting shot instead in New York itself.
Scott Pilgrim only ended up using the real Toronto as a location because Wright insisted on it. He felt that the particular chilled (and chilled, as in cold) atmosphere of Canada's biggest city was integral to the feel of O'Malley's world.
Not only did Wright make use of locations in Toronto landmarks like Lee's Palace, Casa Loma and the Pizza Pizza chain, he also shot on the same unremarkable, everyday streets that had inspired O'Malley's original art in the comics. This way, even when the movie is at its most imaginatively fantastical, it is always grounded in the regular mundanities of the real Toronto.