Scooby dooby new: mystery-solving dog to return in animated film

Cowardly pooch Scooby-Doo will return to his animated roots in a new Hollywood film, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Studio Warner Bros has hired Emmy nominee Tony Cervone to direct the new big-screen effort, the latest in a series of abortive attempts to bring the long-running Hanna-Barbera cartoon back to multiplexes. Warner tried to get an animated film off the ground in August 2013, but then shifted attention to a new live action/CGI iteration in June last year, according to reports at the time. The studio now appears to have returned to its original plan.

Scooby-Doo starred in two live action/CGI hybrids movies over a decade ago, with 2002’s Scooby-Doo and 2004 sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed taking more than £455 million (Dh2.6 billion) at the global box office overall, despite generally negative reviews. Both films starred the husband and wife pairing of Freddie Prinze Jr (Fred) and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Daphne), along with Matthew Lillard (Shaggy) and Linda Cardellini (Velma), as Scooby’s teenage paranormal investigator pals. Australian actor Neil Fanning voiced Scooby.

Cervone is a Scooby-Doo veteran, who has worked on a pair of small-screen films starring the craven hound, 2010’s Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo and last year’s Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. Warner hopes the film will pave the way for the studio to usher in a new wave of movies based on its rights to the Hanna-Barbera back catalogue, which includes 1960s and 70s classics such as The Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, Wacky Races, Top Cat, Hong Kong Phooey, Captain Caveman and The Jetsons.

The new Scooby-Doo film, for which no cast details are yet available, is scheduled to be released in 2018.