Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? Apparently soon heading back to theaters. Word has come down that the folks over at Warner Bros. are keen on running the nostalgia machine once again and are now making plans to bring the Mystery Machine-driving gang back to the big screen.
Deadline first got word of the developing Scooby-Doo reboot, but what's unfortunate is that their report is completely lacking in details. In addition to not mentioning possible stars or a director, there's no mention of whether or not the plan is to bring the spooky mystery solvers back in animated form or in live action, as they first did 12 years ago when Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, and Linda Cardellini played Fred, Daphne, Shaggy and Velma, respectively, in the Raja Gosnell-directed version (which also happened to be Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn's first big commercial film.:
Getting back to the reboot, however, WB has apparently already hired newcomer screenwriter Randall Green to pen the screenplay. Because we don't really know anything about Green's background, it sadly doesn't give us any clues as to what medium we can expect the new Scooby-Doo movie to take form in.
Scooby-Doo was originally a Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon series that began in the late 60s, and it has since seen the launch of 13 different television shows. In addition to the big budget, theatrically released Scooby-Doo from 2002, which got a sequel in 2004 called Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, there have also been two live action television movies made: Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (an origin story about the gang that was made in 2009) and Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.
Whether it ends up being animated or live-action, when thinking about how the franchise has performed at the box office in the past it's hard to really see what Warner Bros. is thinking with this reboot. The studio had originally planned to make a Scooby-Doo 3 after Monsters Unleashed, but those plans were scrapped after the sequel managed to make a little more than half of what it's predecessor made globally. Yes, a decade has now passed, but have the feelings about another Scooby Doo movie changed?
At this time there is no time table available for this project, but it sounds like it is very much in the earliest of early stages. If it actually does start moving forward and become a priority at the studio, you can probably expect to hear a few updates about it in the coming months.
