Warner Bros. plans reboot of live-action Scooby-Doo franchise

By Rick Marshall June 18, 2014

It’s been 10 years since Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed hit theaters, and the live-action sequel’s failure to match the success of its 2002 predecessor apparently has studio Warner Bros. looking to reboot the franchise all together.

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According to Deadline, the studio intends to start from scratch with a new, live-action film featuring the Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters who solves mysteries with the help of a talking Great Dane named Scooby-Doo. The report indicates that screenwriter Randall Green has been tasked with penning a new big-screen adventure for the characters, with the original franchise’s producer, Charles Roven, overseeing the reboot.

The 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo raked in more than $268 million worldwide, and featured a relatively impressive cast of young actors as its leads, with Freddie Prinze Jr as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Linda Cardellini as Velma. The 2004 sequel earned just over $181 million. It’s unlikely that any of the previous films’ cast will return for the reboot.

In a sad bit of timing, the news of the Scooby-Doo reboot comes just a few days after the death of Casey Kasem, the original voice of Shaggy in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

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