Mindy Kaling Making An Adult Series About The Most Popular Cartoon Ever
The premiere date for HBO Max's Velma, featuring the voice of Mindy Kaling as the titular lead, has been announced as January 12.
Leave it to Mindy Kaling to put a fun twist on an old classic, as the multi-hyphenated performer and The Office star will soon have a brand new hit under her belt with HBO Max’s Velma. The project will act as a spinoff of the fan-favorite character from the Scooby-Doo franchise and give her her own backstory via an adult animated series. While it’s been in talks for more than two years, things are finally about to get spooky with TVLine announcing that the show will premiere on Thursday, January 12.
Haters are gonna hate, and that’s something that Mindy Kaling knew when she set out to create and lead the vocal cast for Velma. Unlike the “classic” cartoons that see the brainy member of Mystery Inc. (and the rest of the gang for that matter) as a white character, the series will feature the titular case-cracker as a teen of South Asian descent. She’s already poked fun at tweeting naysayers in the show’s first official teaser, so we can only imagine that there’s more where that came from throughout the 10-episode first season.
So, who else can we expect to hear alongside Mindy Kaling in Velma? Will there be any other members of the famed team of mystery solvers? For now, we know that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Glenn Howerton will star as Fred Jones with Crazy Rich Asians’ Constance Wu as Daphne Blake, and Hocus Pocus 2’s Sam Richardson as Norville Rogers aka Shaggy.
Making up the ensemble cast is a star-studded list that includes Russell Peters, Jane Lynch, Melissa Fumero, Wanda Sykes, Sarayu Blue, Frank Welker, Cherry Jones, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Fortune Feimster, Nicole Byer, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Yvonne Orji, Karl-Anthony Towns, Ming-Na Wen, Debby Ryan, Shay Mitchell, Ken Leung, and Kulap Vilaysack. We know what you’re thinking: what about Scooby-Doo?! As of this moment, it seems as though Mindy Kaling and the rest of the top dogs behind Velma haven’t worked the famous canine into the script – but maybe he’ll be introduced down the line as a newborn pup!
As for the storyline, we know that Mindy Kaling plans to use Velma to tell the tale of how the gang came to be, albeit through a darker lens than we’re used to when it comes to the long-running franchise. We know that a murder has taken place and that Fred is one of the main suspects, leading his soon-to-be pals on a quest to prove or disprove his innocence. In typical high school fashion, everyone has a crush on someone who has feelings for another person in the group, making teen hormones run high during this very important murder investigation.
It’s been a huge year for the wittiest and wisest member of Mystery Inc. with those behind the Scooby-Doo franchise confirming that the character is a lesbian. After the announcement was made just a few months ago, many fans were wondering if Mindy Kaling’s Velma would keep up with the big revelation or if she would go her own way. It would appear that for at least the first season, Kaling’s character will have a crush on Fred while being pined for by Shaggy, and we can’t wait to see how it all pans out.
