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Tim Briody: As much as the folks here skewed my perception of it, this was a niche within a niche from the very beginning. I'm glad that everyone I know that was psyched for it loved it without exception, and I expect it to be an absolute monster of a cult hit on DVD, but it's one of the pricier flops at the box office, sorry to say.

Josh Spiegel: I'm with Tim, except I don't know that my perception was very skewed. I would have been pleasantly surprised if Scott Pilgrim made more than $15 million this weekend. As he points out, this is not a very popular property. The only reasons I'd heard of Scott Pilgrim before this weekend were twofold: I write for this site (and people here encouraged me to read the series, which I'm glad to have done) and I'd heard there would be a movie. I'm not a big graphic-novel guy, and since this story is so far outside the supposed realm of graphic novels, I can't imagine it was picking up that much heat. Also, the marketing was all over the place. The domestic poster for this movie is as terrible as you can get, considering how great the movie is. It shows a guy playing bass, his head bent down. No explanation of the concept, the lead actor's face is hidden, the lead actor's name is not mentioned, no reference to the source material, and the director's involvement in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz is at the bottom.

Having said all of that, my experience this weekend may be anecdotal, but it is proof that, as much as some critics elsewhere have pigeonholed it, Scott Pilgrim can survive with other demographics: I saw the movie with my wife (who was seeing it because...well, mostly because I wanted to), my parents (both in their mid-fifties), and my in-laws (both over age 60). Except for my mother-in-law, we all loved it. My parents don't play video games or read comic books, nor do my in-laws. Small proof that stereotyping doesn't always make sense.

Matthew Huntley: Josh, good call on the poor poster design for this movie. I guess this never dawned on me because I did know what the movie was about and I did know who the star was, so I personally didn't need a whole lot of explanation from the hard copy ads. But you're right - for anyone who's never seen the trailer/TV spots, this poster is obscure and sort of uninteresting. For all they know, it could be about a kid in a school talent show playing the bass, even though there's a lot more to it.

I have to admit I wasn't initially excited for Scott Pilgrim. Its first trailer made it seem like it was just another "Michael Cera movie," in which he plays yet another socially awkward geek trying to get a girl while muttering self-deprecating dialogue. I remember thinking (as most people probably did), "here we go again." But then the second trailer was released and I had a lot more faith in it, not least because Kieran Culkin and Anna Kendrick were shown to have supporting roles. So, along with all the "too niche of an audience" reasoning suggested by other BOP members in this thread, my theory for why the movie failed stems from the ineffective first trailer. Had the second trailer come out first, the movie might have raised more eyebrows and jump started better word-of-mouth before its opening. Also, the poster might have meant more.

Long-term prospects, I'm sorry, to say, don't seem promising. The end of the summer tends to get crowded, and because Scott Pilgrim is already stuck in fifth place, it'll probably be lost until the home market. Let's hope the DVD/Blu-ray covers are more enticing and informative to people unaware of the movie's plot.

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