Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? On Netflix, to be exact. The streamer has landed a deal to bring a live-action series version of Scooby-Doo to their streaming platform.
The Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon will be adapted through an already secured script-to-series commitment. Who is behind this plot? Old Man Withers? Marcy?
No, it is none other than Greg Berlanti, the producer behind the Arrowverse on the CW, and who has recently been responsible for Superman & Lois, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, and All American, to name a few.
Scooby Doo going to Netflix seems strange, as Warner Bros. owns the rights, and Berlanti locked a huge deal with Warner Bros. Discovery just last year. Is this more evidence of the market shifting back to licensing content to others to generate the lost revenue that resulted from their streaming follies? It would seem so.
The new series will be written by Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg (High Fidelity, Cowboy Bebop) while Sarah Schechter, Leigh London Redman, André Nemec, and Jeff Pinkner will executive produce. It will be made by Warner Bros. Television.
The recent animated spinoff Velma was a complete disaster for Warner Bros., savaged by fans and abandoned by audiences. The lead creative voice on that debacle, Mindy Kaling, then threw gasoline on the fire by criticizing the audience for the reception the show received. That didn’t go well for her. It was canceled.
Will this new version escape from the shadow of Velma? And can it possibly be as much flat-out stupid fun as the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, which I maintain is underappreciated and a work of low-key genius?
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