While Disney is out there remaking every single animated movie they’ve ever made in live-action, leave it to the Mystery Gang to show that sometimes, animation is still better. Why fix what isn’t broken? You may very well ask, after watching the first trailer for the new Scooby-Doo movie, “Scoob!”
The feature-length film will be the first Scooby-Doo film since 2004’s “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.” After two severely underseen live-action movies, the old gang and the Mystery Machine is back in animation. The twist? Just like that “Lupin III” trailer, “Scoob!” brings a new and updated 3D CGI animation makeover to the classic Hanna-Barbera characters. Honestly, these properties worked just fine in animation, so why ruin it with human flesh and real life? There’s little chance you have seen someone enter through one door in a long hallway and exit on the opposite side of the hallway as if with magic. “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” showed that animation can do wonders for the superhero genre, so try to replicate that with muted colors and gritty realism? There’s a reason why no one has ever done a “Yogi Bear” live-action movie… what’s that? No. We don’t talk about that one.
The biggest question, however, is what comes next. Since every movie nowadays also has to serve as the beginning of a cinematic universe, why not use “Scoob!” to jumpstart a universe of animated Hanna-Barbera characters? Just follow it with a “Dick Dastardly” origin story and make your way to a reboot of “Wacky Races.” Here’s the official synopsis:
The first full-length animated Scooby-Doo adventure for the big screen is the never-before-told stories of Scooby-Doo’s origins and the greatest mystery in the career of Mystery Inc. “SCOOB!” reveals how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined with young detectives Fred, Velma, and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now, with hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global “dogpocalypse,” the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone imagined.
“Scoob!” is being made by Warner Bros. and its Warner Animation Group division. The film is directed by Tony Cervone and it features Zac Efron as Fred, Amanda Seyfried as Daphne, Gina Rodriguez as Velma, Will Forte as Shaggy, and Frank Welker reprising his longtime role as the voice of the titular Great Dane, Scooby-Doo. The script comes from Kelly Freemon Craig with a story by Matt Lieberman. The film will arrive in theaters on May 15, 2020.