Scooby-Doo Netflix Live-Action Series Happening

The Scooby-Doo live-action Netflix series will have Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, writer and producer for Jumanji: The Next Level, on board as both writers and executive producers. Andre Nemec and Jeff Pinker will also executive produce under the Midnight Radio banner, with Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schecter, and Leigh London Redman executive producing under Berlanti Productions. Jonathan Gabay and Adrienne Erickson are also on board as co-executive producers.

There have already been a few live-action Scooby-Doo projects before this Netflix adaptation, with the most notable being the two live-action films Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed in the early 2000s. These films brought in quite a bit of money at the box office, grossing over $250 million and $180 million, respectively, at the worldwide box office. The cast included Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, Linda Cardellini as Velma, and Neil Fanning as Scooby.

Of course, the cast of the live-action Scooby-Doo Netflix series is a complete mystery for now, but Matthew Lillard immediately started trending on social media after the potential show was first leaked. Lillard was one of the best fits for his role as Shaggy and has since reprised the role in animated projects and the MultiVersus video game. Though Lillard has aged out of the role of Shaggy, who is a teenager in the original cartoon, fans are suggesting he could play one of the villains of the series.

The villains of the Scooby-Doo cartoons are typically supernatural entities that are unmasked to be regular people at the end of the episode. This would make Lillard a perfect choice, as his identity could be kept a secret until his unmasking. Of course, we still don’t know if the Netflix show will have a serialized season-long villain, a villain of the week, or a mixture of the two. 

The Scooby-Doo franchise started with the original cartoon series that aired in the 1960s, with many animated revivals happening over the years. In most iterations, the show follows the Scooby Gang of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby as they travel around in their Mystery Machine to solve supernatural mysteries. The most recent project from the franchise is the Max Velma series, which has received mixed to negative reviews from critics and audiences. 

It seems likely that the Scooby-Doo live-action Warner Bros and Netflix series will be more similar to the previous animated iterations, though the reported billing of a one-hour “drama” would certainly be different from the tone of most of the shows. Typically, Scooby episodes are lighthearted comedic mysteries, so an hour-long drama would definitely be a different take on the material. For now, we’ll just have to wait until we can hear more about this live-action series and what it will be about.

Source: Variety