Johannes Fehrle 
Leading into the Franchise. 
Remediation as (Simulated) 
Transmedia World. 
The Case of Scott Pilgrim 
Abstract 
In this article, I examine the Scott Pilgrim franchise from an adaptation as 
well as a transmedia franchising angle, setting these approaches off from 
Henry Jenkins’ conceptualization of transmedia storytelling. By focusing 
mainly on Edgar Wright’s film adaptation, I examine how remediation is used 
in the film as a strategy to link the adaptation to the comic books as well as 
the simultaneously released video game. I argue that the film both integrates 
itself into the larger franchise by drawing on the other products, particularly 
through its visual aesthetics, and opens the door to a larger transmedial 
world by ›simulating‹ its existence through references to other products that 
seem to, but do not in fact, exist in our world. 
1. Enter. Scott Pilgrim
At the latest since its film adaptation by Edgar Wright in 2010, Korean-French-
Canadian artist and writer Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comic book series Scott Pil-
grim (2004–2010) has become firmly lodged in the international nerd canon.1 
Both film and comic book tell the story of video game expert, untalented bass 
1 I would like to thank Stefan Danter as well as the anonymous reviewers for their comments on 
this article; needless to say, all oversights are mine. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
player, and professional slacker Scott Pilgrim, who tries to get over the recent 
breakup with his ex-girlfriend Natalie ›Envy‹ Adams. While his initial inability 
to ›move on‹ is expressed in his rebound-dating of an Asian-Canadian high 
school girl, Knives Chau, things change when the Amazon delivery girl Ra-
mona Flowers shows up in his dream and, shortly thereafter, in reality. Ra-
mona quickly becomes his new love interest. While she revives Scott’s life 
spirit, Ramona comes with the baggage of having seven evil ex-boyfriends 
(or evil exes in the film, since one of the exes turns out to be an ex-girlfriend) 
whom Scott has to defeat in fighting-game-inspired battles in order to win or 
keep Ramona as a girlfriend. Following Jeff Thoss, one can regard the rela-
tively simple plot of love, heart break, music, and game culture as primarily a 
means for the narratives to draw heavily on the aesthetics and special semi-
otics of arcade and early console fighting games and beat ’em ups to attempt 
to imitate or—using Bolter and Grusin’s term—remediate them first in the 
comic and then, with the adaptation, in the film medium (cf. BOLTER/GRUSIN 
2000). As Thoss puts it, »the relatively trite and uninspired story of romance 
and self-realization is used as a mere foil for O’Malley to demonstrate his 
arguably novel and ingenious skills in impersonating games« (THOSS 2014: 
193). As Thoss rightly points out, the comic copies a video game aesthetic; its 
plot development likewise copies a fighting game’s movement from boss 
battle to boss battle, eventually leading to a fight with a final boss, the Ameri-
can club owner Gideon Graves, which includes a ›replay‹ sequence starting 
from the beginning of the final ›boss level‹. As the idea of a ›replay‹ suggests, 
the storyworld’s logic, which is mostly oriented toward a somewhat carica-
tured but ›realistic‹ depiction of late 20th/early 21st century urban Canadian 
life, breaks radically with real-world laws in the fighting sequences and, like 
the plot development, functions according to a video game logic: in best 
fighting game fashion, the characters’ kicks and punches are labeled as ›com-
bo‹, ›reversal‹, etc., the combatants can perform physical feats impossible in a 
realistic storyworld, and Scott’s adversaries drop coins, items, and, in one 
case, an extra life. It is therefore not surprising that the film picks up on and, 
in fact, exaggerates these references and remediations, or that a beat ’em up 
console game entitled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The Game (2010) was re-
leased to coincide with the film adaptation’s opening in movie theaters. It 
could even be argued that the game, in some sense, brings the storyworld’s 
orientation on fighting games full circle. Ironically, the game, however, lacks 
most of the remediations which mark the comic’s and film’s aesthetics and 
therefore—from a critical perspective—is the least interesting of the texts. 
2. Scott Pilgrim and Transmedia Storytelling 
Despite the presence of multiple media products unified under the Scott Pil-
grim label, if we look at the Scott Pilgrim franchise from a transmedia per-
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
spective, we do not see an example of the interlinking of media products 
which for Henry Jenkins constitutes an instance of transmedia storytelling. As 
Jenkins has written on various occasions, transmedia storytelling ›at its best‹ 
functions like a mosaic or puzzle that is assembled by consumers as they 
›travel‹ across multiple media. As Jenkins puts it, 
[t]ransmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get 
dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a 
unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it[s] 
own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. […] Most often, transmedia sto-
ries are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional 
worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories. This process 
of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers. 
(JENKINS 2007: n.pag.)  
Neither of the two processes which Jenkins describes as typical for trans-
media storytelling are particularly pronounced in the Scott Pilgrim franchise. 
All three main texts—comic, movie, and game—aim to tell the ›same‹ story 
employing the ›same‹ characters; the impossibility of telling the same story in 
different versions or media notwithstanding. It nevertheless seems safe to 
say that the plot and characters are recognizable to a reader, player, or viewer, 
as variants of one version of, e.g., Ramona Flowers not aiming toward radical 
alterations, despite the difference in versions, interpretations, and media and 
their necessarily different narrative and ludic strategies and potentials. An 
adaptation studies perspective would furthermore highlight the various crea-
tors and co-creators as well as the different aesthetic effects they achieve, the 
different consumptive experiences of those who interact with the various 
texts (cf. Hutcheon’s concept of modes of engagement proposed in HUTCHEON 
2013), to name only a few, and reach the conclusion that these are, of course, 
not the same characters in the same story. While these stories and characters 
therefore are not exact and faithful copies of an original—something that is 
impossible to achieve whenever an act of recreation is involved, whether in 
the same medium or a different one—, they clearly aim at recognizability and 
similarity, if not ›sameness‹. It seems safe to assume, moreover, that they will 
be judged accordingly by many readers/viewers/players familiar with other 
products in the Scott Pilgrim franchise. 
There is still more to be said about the interconnectedness of these 
texts from an adaptation studies perspective. If we accept the graphic novel 
as a ›source text‹, a common term outside adaptation studies but one laden 
with problematic connotations and thus avoided within most adaptation the-
orists’ more nuanced perspective, the situation is fairly clear. What Jenkins 
calls extensions of the fictional universe, a technique he sets off from ›mere‹ 
adaptations (cf. JENKINS 2007: n.pag.), take place mostly within un-official fan 
discourse. If we follow the de-hierarchization of so-called ›source texts‹ fre-
quently advocated in adaptation studies, however, we might as well regard 
the movie as a first point of entry into the fictional universe of Scott Pilgrim 
for many consumers, and thus as a ›personal‹ source text, despite its later 
time of production. In other words, as Linda Hutcheon sums up, »[m]ultiple 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
versions [of a text] exist laterally, not vertically« (HUTCHEON 2013: xv). If the 
movie thus becomes the ›original‹ instantiation of the fictional universe in a 
viewer’s personal consumptive history, the graphic novel, alongside other 
products such as a promotional animated mini clip Scott Pilgrim vs. the Ani-
mation (2010), which aired on American cable network Adult Swim to support 
the film’s release, constitute extensions of the film’s storyworld.2 Finally, if we 
move away from the narrow view focusing exclusively on plot and narrative, 
which seems to underlie Jenkins’ definition, there are, of course, countless 
›extensions‹ of the comic in the filmic version, such as the almost necessarily 
greater detail of a photographic image, even one that has been simplified and 
altered through CGI processes, as opposed to a drawn one, creative decisions 
regarding color, lighting, casting, acting, and so forth, which ›extend‹ as well 
as ›reduce‹—or, to choose less value-laden terms, transform, reinterpret, and 
reinvent—the bare-bone aesthetics of O’Malley’s rather iconic drawing style.3 
To the extent that rudiments exist of a transmedia world-making un-
derstood, according to Jenkins’ definition, as plot extension rather than the 
transformation of consumptive experience via the aesthetic as well as the 
minor narrative transformations I have laid out, they are most clearly found in 
fan fiction. Scott Pilgrim fan fiction ranges from the expected—and, in this 
case, decidedly genre appropriate—›shipping‹—i.e., matching the characters 
in different romantic constellations—via stories filling narrative gaps or ex-
ploring the characters’ past (romantic) relationships—a classic case of exten-
tion of the narrative in Jenkins’ sense—to crossovers and mash ups with oth-
er fictional universes typical of fan fiction, and such mundane, but apparently 
fetishistically-charged stories as Scott Pilgrim vs. The Winter (2010), a narra-
tive in eight installations, in which Scott, his ›cool gay roommate‹ Wallace, 
and Ramona battle a common cold and nurse each other. The non-official 
nature of fan fiction, of course, raises its own problems with regard to the 
concept of transmedia storytelling, since I would claim that the idea of trans-
media storytelling usually involves an orchestrated or at least coordinated act 
on a producer’s (or ›author’s‹) part—but I cannot go into this aspect here. 
3. Scott Pilgrim and Transmedia Franchising 
Instead, I want to shift the focus of my discussion to an angle suggested by 
Clare Parody, who examines transmedia products from a marketing rather 
                                                 
2 Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation fills in, in animated form, some of the backstory of Scott and 
Kim as well as that of a minor character called Lisa, who appears at the beginning of the second 
comic book Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2005) but does not appear in the movie. 
3 Cf. Pascal Lefevre’s exploration of the different visual ontologies of comic to film adaptation, 
which serves as a helpful first step despite Lefevre’s strong privileging of the source text and the 
somewhat problematic idea of an adaptation being faithful »to the spirit of the original work« 
(LEFEVRE 2007: 5). I use the term ›iconic‹ in Scott McCloud’s sense (cf. MCCLOUD 1994: 27–57). 
Through its reduction of mimetic detail, this iconic style carries with it the implication of a greater 
universality and bigger Leerstellen (gaps) in the sense of reader-response criticism. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
than a primarily narrative perspective, labeling what she finds as »transmedia 
franchising« (PARODY 2011: passim). Transmedia franchising involves the dis-
tribution of commodities under one label in different media, which certainly 
applies to the case of Scott Pilgrim. While franchising is not exactly a new 
technique, as Jenkins rightfully notes in a response to critics of his definition 
of transmedia storytelling on his weblog, transmedia franchising does change 
in a convergence environment. According to Jenkins, »[m]ost previous media 
franchises were based on reproduction and redundancy, but transmedia rep-
resents a structure based on the further development of the storyworld 
through each new medium« (JENKINS 2011: n.pag.). As with Jenkins’ limited 
model of adaptation, the idea of franchise as merely reproductive is too re-
ductionist and too much invested with the idea of a freely transferable core, 
resulting from Jenkins’ focus on content, which he seems to understand as 
clearly separable from form. A critique of Jenkins’ understanding of adapta-
tion, such as the one by Christy Dena, which Jenkins addresses on his blog, 
could be extended to his understanding of franchising. Dena highlights the 
act of interpretation which is a part of any adaptation. The same could be said 
for franchising, which also necessarily involves some form of adaptation. 
Whereas Jenkins attempts to explicate his position by pointing to the model 
of »additive comprehension« (JENKINS 2011: n.pag.) borrowed from game 
designer Neil Young, a concept he also employs in Convergence Culture (cf. 
JENKINS 2008: 127–133), he merely restates his contentions when he excludes 
transmedia adaptations in a concept focusing on »the degree that each new 
text adds to our understanding of the story as a whole« (JENKINS 2011: n.pag.). 
Adaptations obviously also add to or change our understanding of a story by, 
e.g., giving us a clearer (more detailed) image of the storyworld or an actor’s 
face for a character we had previously only imagined. Of the four main func-
tions of transmedia storytelling’s additive comprehension which Jenkins’ lists 
in »Transmedia 202« (»[o]ffers backstory, [m]aps the [w]orld, [o]ffers us other 
character’s perspectives on the action, [d]eepens audience engagement« 
[JENKINS 2011: n.pag.]), two—offering a backstory and offering other charac-
ter’s perspectives—are primarily narrative. Whereas the offering of a backsto-
ry is a clear plot extension, offering other characters’ perspectives is also a 
feature of many adaptations (e.g., in the segments in HBO’s adaptation Game 
of Thrones [2011– ] in which none of the view point characters from Martin’s 
novels are present), while mapping the world (e.g., through added visual in-
terpretation and detail) and attempting to deepen audience engagement are 
(almost) inescapably features of transmedia adaptations. The reality of 
transmediation is more complex and richer than Jenkins seems to want to 
admit in order to keep his model orderly. In other words, adaptations orga-
nized within transmedia franchises also exist in complex interactions with 
each other and in further interactions with the larger forces of convergence 
culture and, therefore, likewise benefit from an exploration taking their inter-
connectedness into consideration. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
Coming back to the Scott Pilgrim franchise, we have three main texts, 
if we do not count fan fiction for the moment: the comics, the film, and the 
game. Moreover, there are various paraphernalia, from an adaptation/ 
remediation of the comic for mobile devices to non- or at least less-narrative 
and more obviously commercial products such as clothing, dolls, wall clocks, 
iPhone hard cases, and other products. All of these are marketed under the 
Scott Pilgrim label and link back primarily to one of the three main texts, 
mainly through the use of images from film, comic, or video game. The 
transmedia franchise rests, as is frequently the case, according to Parody, on 
the back of an adaptation (cf. PARODY 2011: 211), in this case most often, but 
not always, the film version, which the producers hoped would reach a larger 
audience than the comics originally published by the West Coast independent 
publisher Oni Press. 
While it seems fairly non-controversial to group the various merchan-
dise items as part of a transmedia franchise, there is a more intricate (and 
more controversial) point to be made about transmediality, and an existing 
transmedial world of Scott Pilgrim as well as its link to franchising. As men-
tioned, there is a real transmedia franchise in place, but there is also a ›simu-
lated‹ transmedia world (for lack of a better term) or, more correctly, a story-
world marked as transmedia world in the comic and, to an even greater ex-
tent, in the film. This simulation of a world that is transmedial in one medium 
is closely connected to the strategy of what Jay David Bolter and Richard 
Grusin call ›remediation‹, the representation of one medium in another. Jeff 
Thoss has discussed many instances of remediation, under the heading of 
what he calls the comic’s and film’s attempt to »tell it like a game«, as in-
stances of a »performative media rivalry« (THOSS 2014: 187 and passim) in 
which one medium attempts to performatively evoke through its discourse 
the language and specificity of another medium, in this case video games, 
and show how well it can simulate that media’s presence in its own. 
4. Remediation, the Simulation of a Transmedia World, 
and the Interconnectedness of the Franchise 
Placing the film at the center of my reading, I want to argue that the film even 
more than the comics or the video game uses remediation as an aesthetic 
strategy in order to simulate a transmediality. It consequently creates a seem-
ingly transmedial world in which it not only foregrounds its own filmic nature, 
but also draws on and plays with the viewers’ game and comic encyclopedi-
as.4 As my main example, I want to use Scott Pilgrim’s fight against Matthew 
Patel, Ramona’s first evil ex. In the fighting sequence we do not only have the 
remediation of arcade fighting and beat ‘em up video games, which Thoss 
                                                 
4 I am drawing here on the concept of an encyclopedia used by reader and creator to encode/ 
decode a text as suggested by Eco, e.g., in his The Role of the Reader (cf. ECO 1979: passim). 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
explores in his article, but also a TV aesthetic, the film’s foregrounding of its 
own mediality as well as a play with some iconic film genres, a remediation 
of the comics medium, and finally a strong link to the theater as a fifth medi-
um thrown into the mix when we see Ramona on a Shakespearean balcony 
placed at the center of an extremely conspicuous spotlight (cf. THOSS 2014). 
The scene begins with Sex Bob-omb’s performance and employs a split 
screen, originally a filmic technique employed in early Hollywood films, but—
especially in combination with the images of musicians we see—more recent-
ly associated primarily with the MTV-aesthetics of 1990s TV. More broadly, a 
split screen is perceived as an ›unnatural‹ editing technique, foregrounding 
the mediality of film by making visible the impact of an editor, a role which in 
the dominant continuity editing system is regarded as one that should be 
kept hidden in order to not disrupt the audience’s engagement and willing 
suspension of disbelief. If we read the filmic text as an adaptation of a comics 
source, the side by side of seemingly non-temporally progressing images 
also recalls the strong spatiality of the comics medium through its panel lay-
out. This view is strengthened by a small black gutter-like division between 
the three ›panels‹. A third option for the interpretation of this sequence is 
through the narrative’s link to video games as a split screen typical of console 
video games’ multiplayer modes, in which a part of the screen is reserved for 
each player’s avatar. Coming back to the original interpretation of the split 
screen as a link to music television, several other references to the music 
video/dance film genre can be detected in actor Satya Bhabha’s parody of a 
tap dance, which is highlighted by the camera’s framing of only his feet, as 
well as his willfully over-acted Saturday Night Fever-inspired pose (see fig. 1). 
Apart from its pastiche of various genres and unusual editing choices, 
Satya Bhabha’s campy, non-naturalistic acting is another way in which the 
film foregrounds its own mediality, if any reminder of its mediality was still 
necessary given the barrage of other media appearing as remediated bits. An 
excessive use of generic elements from the spaghetti western-style through-
the-legs duel shot which Sergio Leone popularized in his 1960s films (see fig. 
2), via martial arts sequences in best non-naturalistic Hong Kong style, to 
anime-inspired sequences extending time and space and including motion 
lines, translate the comic’s combination of Western and Eastern graphic tradi-
tions into the film medium. As Drew Morton argues in his visual essay From 
the Panel to the Frame, the radical manipulation of film speed, which he de-
scribes as the »temporal remediation« (MORTON 2013: n.pag.) of speed ramp-
ing, to slow narrative time down and in the process make possible almost 
panel-like freeze frames is a recurring feature in recent film adaptations of 
comic books such as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009). The complete disre-
gard for real world physics which make it possible for Scott, e.g., to jump for 
a long enough time to hit Matthew Patel 64 times and for people to crash 
through roofs and stone walls without being seriously injured, which the film 
takes over via the comic from arcade and Eastern martial arts and anime 
films, comes almost as an afterthought in this firework of remediation. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
 
Fig. 1: 
Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) strikes a Saturday Night Fever pose 
 
 
Fig. 2: 
The battle as duel. A pastiche of a ›duel shot‹ in the style of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns 
 
 
Fig. 3: 
Spatial remediation in an attempt to simulate comics spatio-topia 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
As becomes apparent from these examples, the line between different media 
and the medial origin of the various instances of remediation is blurred in a 
style which, with Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, can be described as ›hyper-
mediated‹. Hypermediacy is a style which arises out of a »fascination with 
media« (BOLTER/GRUSIN 2000: 31) and aims to foreground the mediality of the 
various media whose styles and registers are appropriated and simulated as 
well as the film’s own mediality. While it is clear that we are facing hyperme-
diacy, the medial origin of the particular semiotics is not always clear. Some 
of the instances discussed, for example, could also be understood as crossing 
over into comics or video game territory. There are clear markers of the se-
miotics of comics present in the fighting sequence between Scott Pilgrim and 
Matthew Patel. The most striking example is the overlaying of the photo-
graphic image with drawn-in comic sound effects, which are themselves the 
comic mediums’ attempt to represent and remediate aural phenomena. In the 
case of the film, these involve a playfully unnecessary instance of a re-
remediation that is entirely non-naturalistic. The most striking instance of a 
remediation of comics expressive potential, however, is the film’s use of 
O’Malleys original drawings arranged as animated comic panels on the 
screen in an act of both graphic and spatial remediation (cf. MORTON 2013) in 
an attempt to approximate comics’ arrangement of its different panels into 
the spatio-temporal layout (see fig. 3), which comics theoretician Thierry 
Groensteen sees as defining for comics (cf. GROENSTEEN 2007).5 
Finally, there are countless video game elements, ranging from audi-
tory to visual. The auditory elements comprise, among others, an 8-bit arcade 
›bling‹ sound playing when Patel lands as well as the excessive echo and 
slight delay on Wallace’s voice as he screams »fight«, an effect meant to re-
semble/appropriate the sound frequently played at the beginning of a round 
in fighting games such as Street Fighter (1987) or Tekken (1994). Visual bor-
rowings and remediations from video games include superimposed text, 
stemming this time not from the semiotic register of comics but from the 
discourse of fighting games, which dramatically juxtaposes the opponents, 
instructs the player what to do or explains the (health or energy) status of 
characters or helps players interpret what is happening beyond the immedi-
ately apparent spectacle of two polygon figures engaging in a ›fight‹. 
This sequence is exemplary for Wright’s style in Scott Pilgrim, which 
rests heavily on the remediation of other media, as well as the highly visible 
and ironic ›enunciation‹ of the film’s own mediality through its hypermediacy. 
If we read the film through Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation, we see 
that the tension at play in remediation between immediacy and hypermedia-
cy, »the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity 
of media themselves« (BOLTER/GRUSIN 2000: 21) or, in Jeff Thoss’s paraphrase, 
eradicating vs. foregrounding the signs of mediation (cf. THOSS 2014: 188), the 
                                                 
5 Groensteen distinguishes between spatio-topia and arthrology, that is, the importance of space 
and the placement of panels, borders, and breakdowns on the page, and the relation between 
individual panels, respectively. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
film leans heavily toward a hypermediated remediation. In fact it seems to 
shun any sense of immediacy which, according to Bolter and Grusin, »dic-
tates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of 
the thing represented« (BOLTER/GRUSIN 2000: 6). This is remarkable considering 
that, as noted, immediacy is the usual mode films produced within the Hol-
lywood system aim at (cf. BOLTER/GRUSIN 2000: 146–158). The remediation in 
Wright’s film, however, in best postmodern simulacrum fashion, presents us 
with elements which are themselves merely signifiers pointing at signifiers, 
images drawn from generic media conventions ultimately uninterested in 
pointing at any media-external reality. What immediacy is attainable is al-
ways already a mediated one. The more ›immediate‹ version of a remediated 
game is its ›original‹ mediation, the more ›immediate‹ version of the spatially 
remediated and animated comic panels depicting the backstory of Ramona 
and Patel in the sequence discussed, for instance, is found in O’Malley’s com-
ics. It is this process of pointing at other texts, both existing and non-existing, 
which most effectively positions the text in a transmedia franchise, both real 
(there is after all a comic as well as a video game) and simulated. Neverthe-
less, immediacy attainable by going back to the historically preceding ›origi-
nal‹ of the comics is nowhere near the ›transparent presentation‹ of an expe-
rience even somewhat close to immediate. 
Writing about the comic version, Thoss argues that »Scott Pilgrim 
turns its storyworld into a video game storyworld in order to show how com-
ics can performatively simulate the presence of a different medium« (THOSS 
2014: 193). The same argument seems applicable for the film adaptation at 
first glance and, in fact, Thoss makes precisely this argument speaking of a 
competition between the two texts over which manages to better remediate 
the medial ›language‹ of video games. I believe, however, that there is a cru-
cial difference at play between the versions, which positions the film within 
the system of a transmedial Scott Pilgrim franchise not present in the comics 
and only later added as a paratext: rather than merely performatively remedi-
ating a generic style of 1980s 8- and 16-bit console video games, as the comic 
did, the film positions itself within the transmedial Scott Pilgrim franchise 
that was being created while the film was shot. As opposed to the comic, 
which was written as a stand-alone text remediating only generic bits of vid-
eo games and other media, most prominently music, the film specifically ties 
itself to the comic by using O’Malley drawings and animating them for film in 
Ramona’s revelation about her past with Matthew Patel. Its makers similarly 
connect the two texts in the TV marketing extension Scott Pilgrim vs. the An-
imation, in which characters clearly based on O’Malley’s original artwork are 
animated in more traditionally filmic ways and voiced by the live action film’s 
cast. While this is not entirely unheard of or surprising for an adaptation 
which after all often tries to cash in, literally as well as culturally, on its 
source’s cultural capital and authenticity, Wright’s film employs a similar 
strategy with regard to the video game by tying in Paul Robertson, the lead 
game designer for the Scott Pilgrim video game, into the filming process. As 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
Drew Morton explains, the film makers asked Robertson to design the extra 
life Scott collects. As Morton argues, the visuals of the extra life clash with 
the film’s own not only through its pixelated 8-bit aesthetics, but also by in-
cluding a Scott Pilgrim who does not look like actor Michael Cera at all, but 
rather draws on the design for the video game, which oriented itself more 
toward O’Malley’s original art work in order to escape the stigma of being 
seen merely as a cheap tie-in product promising little value or enjoyment for 
a customer. The transmedial mixing through remediation aims at a double 
effect, one aesthetic, creating, in Morton’s words, a »transmedia style« (MOR-
TON 2013: n.pag.), the other economic. The film simulates what could be 
called a ›transmedia world‹ by saturating its own storyworld with highly styl-
ized, hypermediated remediation of other media from games, via drama and 
film, to comics, in essence blending them into one storyworld in which these 
various media and their distinctive semiotic registers exist side by side. 
Through this ›simulated‹ transmediality, achieved through the remediation of 
multiple media in one, it also leads from the primarily aesthetic or narrative 
simulation of other media to the economic function underlying the logic of 
franchising, as it draws attention and guides viewers/customers to the exist-
ence of other, similar products. Since, as I have argued, the remediation in 
Scott Pilgrim dwells primarily on the strategy of hypermediacy in Bolter and 
Grusin’s equation, it leaves the consumer longing for both the greater imme-
diacy of the first instantiation of mediation (i.e., the comic, which turns out to 
be already remediated as well) and for the more immediate—haptic and en-
gaging—ludic experience of the game, in which a consumer can ›become‹ 
Scott, rather than watching Scott, Knives, Ramona and Co. ›become‹ video 
game ›characters‹ through their actions. This invitation to participate in a 
game not only exists implicitly in the game-like fighting sequences, but is 
made explicit in another instance of self-conscious hypermediacy, when, ear-
ly in the film, we watch Scott and Knives interact with an arcade game called 
Ninja Ninja Revolution, a parody of the late 1990s Konami game Dance Dance 
Revolution (1998) which looked and functioned similarly. Through such strat-
egies, Wright’s film links to both its ›source‹, the comic, and its ›sibling‹ in the 
franchise, the simultaneously released video game, in a way that transcends 
both traditional, pre-convergence culture adaptations, with their frequent 
attempt to eradicate and replace their sources or play on their cultural signifi-
cance, and tie-in games, which often come as the tail ends of successful ad-
aptations. 
Finally, the comic book itself also joins this transmedia mix, if only ret-
roactively and paratextually—as is frequently the case with other adapted 
texts which become integrated into a transmedia franchise despite not neces-
sarily being narratively interwoven with other products. The back cover of 
Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (2010), the sixth and final volume of the series, 
completed and released only after the film was shot and the game pro-
grammed, includes a design clearly remediating the video game adaptation’s 
aesthetic, at least in the version released by Fourth Estate for the British and 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
European market. A slip case for the sale of the entire comic book series was 
likewise designed by Robertson as part of the transmedia marketing cam-
paign following the expectation of renewed attention for the comic by new 
audiences following the film’s release. While there is, ultimately, a sense of a 
position as part of a larger transmedia franchise in each of the texts, the sto-
rytelling itself is—as I have argued—not the additive puzzle or ›quest‹ through 
different media to get a fuller picture of the narrative and fill in gaps left by 
the individual texts, which is the hallmark of transmedia storytelling accord-
ing to Jenkins. It is rather the pleasure of a »repetition without replication« 
(HUTCHEON 2013: 7), which Linda Hutcheon sees as central to an adaptation’s 
appeal, an aspect which is arguably also central in transmedia storytelling 
and transmedia franchising. In Drew Morton’s opinion, the effect of Scott 
Pilgrim’s avoidance of a ›full-on‹ transmedia narrative approach is that »the 
Scott Pilgrim experience appeases fans of the franchise without alienating the 
casual consumer with narrative homework« (MORTON 2013: n.pag.). 
The double edge of transmedia storytelling, caught between allowing 
dedicated fans to achieve additive comprehension while not alienating more 
casual consumers, has also been noted by other critics of transmedia story-
telling, even those as enthusiastic about its potentials as Jenkins, who stress-
es that »going deeper has to remain an option—something readers choose to 
do—and not the only way to derive pleasure from media franchises« (JENKINS 
2008: 134). While the double aim of providing pleasure for fans and new cus-
tomers alike is the mark of a successful adaptation, Scott Pilgrim still manag-
es to place itself more firmly within the context of a transmedia franchise 
than most traditional novel to film adaptations. In particular through its re-
mediation of both existing sources, such as the comic or the simultaneously 
released video game, and more generic and less specific bits of pop culture 
and media-specific semiotics integrated into its storyworld and narrative style, 
the Scott Pilgrim film simulates a transmedia experience that, on the one 
hand, directs the consumer to the other main products (comic and video 
game as well as other merchandise articles) and, at the same time, is not up-
held by the fairly small number of existing products. Rather, it ›simulates‹ 
(and, therefore, opens doors to) a franchise much larger than the fairly small 
one that was eventually produced due to the film’s lack of a wider commer-
cial success. While Scott Pilgrim’s practices of excessive remediation are cen-
tral to opening its texts to a transmedia franchise, it seems that they are also 
what limits both the texts’ appeal to a broad audience and its suitability as a 
formula to be copied by other franchises. What the case of Scott Pilgrim 
serves to show, however, is that there are multiple strategies and avenues 
into conceptualizing a franchise both for producers and critics of these 
transmedia texts and that aesthetically successful strategies can complement 
the nature and style of the text they integrate into the franchise. It also shows 
that the principle of transmedia should not be constructed in opposition to 
adaptation, as suggested by Jenkins, but is in fact sympathetic to and shares 
many aspects with adaptations. 
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Johannes Fehrle: Leading into the Franchise 
References 
BOLTER, JAY DAVID; RICHARD GRUSIN: Remediation. Understanding New Media. 
Cambridge, MA [MIT Press] 2000 
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GROENSTEEN, THIERRY: The System of Comics. Translated by Bart Beaty and 
Nick Nguyen. Jackson [UP of Mississippi] 2007 
HUTCHEON, LINDA; with SIOBHAN O’FLYNN: A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd edition. 
London [Routledge] 2013 
JENKINS, HENRY: Transmedia Storytelling 101. In: Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 
March 22, 2007. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_ 
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JENKINS, HENRY: Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. 
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PARODY, CLARE: Franchising/Adaptation. In: Adaptation, 4(2), 2011, pp. 210–218 
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