Zoinks, Scoob!
Can you believe it’s been 11 years since the last live-action Scooby-Doo movie? Despite being decent box office successes – the first made $275 mil, while the second made a respectable $181 mil – the Freddy Prince Jr. and Co. flicks didn’t exactly go down so well critically.
Now, more than a decade on, Warner Bros. is having another stab at bringing the Mystery Machine gang back to the big-screen and this time they’re hoping it being animated will help it really steal the box office. This brings it back in line with the original 1969 Scooby Doo, Where Are You! cartoon series, although you can count on this being 3D animated and not 2D. Scoob was already CGI (sorry to break the illusion) in the last two movies so they’re just following suit with the rest of the group, now.
Tony Cervone is directing the new movie, a filmmaker with lots of experience with the characters having made a few straight-to-DVD movies in the series. The producing team behind the two previous flicks, Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, are on-board to produce again, as is Allison Abbate; she has amazing animation pedigree with the likes of The LEGO Movie, The Iron Giant, Frankenweenie and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
An fascinating little nugget of info in this story is that WB, who will release that film under their official Warner Animation Group, is hoping this will kick off a series of movies featuring Hanna-Barbera characters – we previously reported on a Jonny Quest movie being directed by Robert Rodriguez. Could we be looking at a big-screen animated resurgence of The Flintstones? I think it’s all but inevitable if this new Scooby-Doo is a success.
WB has already set a September 21st, 2018 release date for the as-yet-untitled film.
Source: THR