Get ready to hop in the Mystery Machine again. Scooby-Doo is coming back to live-action, this time as a streaming series for Netflix. The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter. The series is the brainchild of producer Greg Berlanti, the man who was in charge of the DC Arrowverse on the CW, not to mention shows like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for Netflix. The project has a script-to-series commitment at Netflix, meaning if the streaming giant likes the script, it would trigger a straight-to-series order. It’s somewhat baffling why this is on Netflix and not Max, which owns the Scooby-Doo property.
This is supposed to be a more dramatic take on the beloved animated show. We’re not really sure how that works, as the title character is a talking Great Dane. Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, who previously adapted Cowboy Bebop for Netflix and High Fidelity for Hulu, are developing the script. Scooby-Doo and his friends first came to live-action in film in 2002. That movie was a huge success at the time and spawned a sequel. While the implication is that the series is a reboot, we’d be lying if we said we didn’t want to see the original cast back together.
The original cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! cartoon first debuted in 1969, and has been around in some form as an animated property ever since. We’ve seen versions where all the ghosts the Mystery, Inc. gang chased were hoaxes. Later years saw the gang face off against literal monsters. Greg Berlanti did a great job with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a more serious take on a goofy premise. So who knows, this may be amazing. We just hope there is a minimal amount of Scrappy-Doo in this version. We can let that pup stay in the kennel.