Do We NEED A Live-Action Scooby-Doo Series?

I could easily just say “no”, but it wouldn’t be much of an article if I didn’t explain why.

Variety is reporting that a live-action Scooby-Doo streaming series is coming out from every animation fan’s worst nightmare, Netflix. Not surprising that a service that seems to hate animation these days and wants to make every anime and cartoon into a live-action de-make has set their sights on the cowardly canine and his mystery-solving teen buddies. They’ve “improved” everything from Cowboy BeBop to Avatar: The Last Airbender in an increasing showing that they hate animation even more than modern Disney seems to with their own library and legacy, between live-action remakes and mediocre animations coming out of the binge addicts at Netflix.

The project has what Variety calls a “script-to-series” commitment as a hour long drama series, with some big names behind it. Not necessarily the ones with a great resume, just a big one. A co-production of Midnight Radio and Bertani Productions, there is no cast announced because its presumably too early. Also, no plot details as of this writing. All we know is that it’s supposed to be based on the Scooby-Doo franchise. Then again, that’s what they tell us about Velma, and we all know how that’s crashed and burned.

My question is why they want to make a live-action Scooby-Doo so bad, and make the episodes an hour long? Both have not been a great success for this franchise in the past. The live-action movies, both in theaters and direct-to-video, are not the best received, while the only previous attempt at hour-long unmaskings was The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which had most of their budget going to their guest-stars because it sure wasn’t going to the animation. (Meanwhile, Scooby-Doo And Guess Who went a half-hour and supported the animation but still boosted the star cameo budget by hiring the cheapest writers they could find in what feels like a parody of Scooby Movies.) Honestly, everything about this makes so little sense to me that I had to write about it.

Let’s start with the big one: being live-action. Why? This is not a franchise that works well in a “real world” scenario. From the ground up, Scooby-Doo Where Are You? was designed to be a cartoon. Fred’s traps and the various gadgets employed by the crooks throughout the various series to pull off their fake hauntings and monsters made sense in a kids cartoon but there have been traps whose failures (yet somehow still snagging the villain) could not work in a more realistic setting. The one that comes to mind is the double ghosts they tried to trap in a washing machine.

If I have to point out every scientific impossibility that takes place in this scene then the clip must be down or you just didn’t watch it. Sometimes even the gadgets used by the villains work as an acceptable explanation until you realize video cameras, projectors, and various other doodads can’t work like that because of science. The hauntings just wouldn’t come off as cool without a lot of CG and a lot of acceptance that is much easier in the “unreality” of animation than it does in any physical world.

This includes accepting a talking dog. We’ve seen shows with talking dogs, but Variety specifically called this a drama, not a comedy. Scooby can talk, though with a barkish speech impediment not used by his parents, siblings, cousins, and the one nephew we’ve met. Meanwhile none of the other animals, including other dogs, share this gift. Even the most comedic versions, like the second version of Scooby-Doo And Scrappy Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, or Shaggy And Scooby-Doo Get A Clue showed other animals talking without some other magic involved like Mystery Incorporated or crossovers with characters from other shows like Dynomutt or Laff-A-Lympics. Trying to make a Scooby-type dog in live-action has always looked weird. You either go cartoony like the movies did and fail, or you go realistic like the Lion King remake and reduce what you can have Scooby-Doo do. It’s a huge mistake trying to make Scooby work in live-action.

Especially in drama form. Again, they said “hour-long drama”, not “hour-long comedy”. At least the live-action movies were trying to be comedies. They got away with more than a drama would, but not as acceptably as a cartoon. I don’t even know why this would have to be Scooby-Doo and be a drama. It’s not like mystery solving teens were all that new when Scooby-Doo Where Are You? came out. Ever hear of the Hardy Boys? The success of Scooby and company may have led to them getting a cartoon, but it had nothing to do with the live-action series, and there’s been more than one of those. The gang themselves were inspired by mystery stories involving teens, The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis, and they were originally going to be a music group called Mystery 5. You want to make four teens fighting fake monsters and be worried about comparisons to Scooby-Doo? Buffy The Vampire Slayer the TV show literally called their group the Scoobies! They fought REAL monsters! Nobody cared! People who hate Josh Whedon still love this show.

I’m also not expecting this to be a kids show. I’m not even convinced the James Gunn-made first movie was for kids. Evil Scrappy, Fred talking about seeing “himself” naked while in Daphne’s body, and if Gunn had his way we’d have lesbian Velman (I ask again, SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THIS EXISTS–WHAT “CODING” STEREOTYPE AM I NOT GETTING from the frumpy smart girl in glasses and an oversized sweater!) and Shaggy being a druggie because apparently they’ve never been a teenager with a high metabolism who is always on the run from criminals in scary outfits trying to do them harm. They’ll probably make Velma a lesbian like they have in the last two “adult” Scooby cartoons nobody likes, though whether Shaggy will be a pothead is a bit more up in the air. Kids aren’t going to sit there for an hour watching a drama minus all the fun stuff of this franchise, so you know this is going to be for grown-ups because clearly we can’t have something made for kids be nostalgic unless its made for former kids. If my generation had that perspective their generation wouldn’t have had Sesame Street.

Then we look at the names attached to the production of this show. The writers are Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg. What have they worked on? Between them we have the Michael Bay produced (but not directed even if his influence is still obvious) Ninja Turtles movies, Alias, She-Spies, Life On Mars, and Netflix’s Cowboy BeBop. A questionable resume, especially that last one that they both worked on. Helping executive produce is André Nemec, whose credits include Ninja Turtles and Life On Mars again as well as Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol, She-Spies, Samurai Girl has also been one they all seem to be tied to, and…Cowboy BeBop. Jeff Pinkner comes to us with a history that also includes Alias and High Fidelity (that’s another that keeps popping up) and…just guess. It involves space bounty hunters. Just guess.

Because apparently there aren’t ENOUGH executive producers, the “Midnight Radio” crew are joined by Beranti Productions, the folks behind the CW DCU. Greg himself is there. While he didn’t work on Netflix BeBop he did “mature” versions of The Tomorrow People and Riverdale. You know, the murder mystery where Jughead suddenly wants Betty instead of food (not that I’d blame him) and Mrs. Grundy was de-aged to her thirties so Archie could shack up with her. Sarah Schechter worked on Riverdale and the CW DCU as well as another Netflix project, Dead Boy Detectives. Leigh London Redman only has four projects to her name, which also includes Dead Boy Detectives and the TV incarnation of Gotham Knights that bears no resemblance to the game as is has the KIDS of the Bat characters instead of the rest of the usual Batman family carrying on for dead Bruce.

Finally, those were the “executive producers”. The “co-executive producers” are Jonathan Gabay (Gotham Knights AND Titans so he screwed over Dick Grayson twice) and going back to Midnight Radio, Adrienne Erickson (High Fidelity and Cowboy Bebop). Clearly all of these people were the go-to for the story about four mystery solving teens and a talking dog that used to be a staple of kids TV until recently. So from two different production companies we have SEVEN producers, two of which are writing, and two co-executive producers. I can already tell where the money’s going. How many producers does it take to screw over a kids show? Nine, apparently.

Even getting into Netflix’s history of not understanding why a show worked so well because it was one of those “dumb cartoons” (again, compare Cowboy BeBop and Avatar: The Last Airbender to their superior animated counterparts), nothing about this sounds like a good idea. Instead of an hour-long live-action drama, maybe get some good kids show mystery writers, go animated, give it a good budget and hire people who won’t leech from it for their own bank accounts (probably Swiss), and make good mystery stories. That worked for decades of TV shows and direct-to-video movies. I’m more and more convinced I don’t need a Netflix account, because it will just break my heart even further to have access to things I wish never existed.