 Update 10/3: Paramount has announced that the merged company will be named Skydance.
The Paramount WB merger has seen an unprecedented amount of legal battles since it was first announced in December. It has become the most expensive takeover in the history of Hollywood at $111 billion dollars. Today, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín officially approved the merger, and closed the litigation case opened a few months back. The merger has no more hurdles, and will be finalized this coming Tuesday, October 6. David Ellison has immediately appointed Ynon Kreiz as CEO of Paramount-WB. Casey Bloys will oversee streaming. Zaslav will no longer be involved with WB, and will walk away with $550 million dollars now that the merger has closed. The deal forbids Paramount-WB from selling off either company in the state for at least five years. Paramount-WB are required to release 32 films theatrically in the first two years. This news comes from Variety.
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 Tomorrow is October, which means it is time for the annual Scoobtober celebration! The full slate of monthly events was announced by PR News Wire. Similarly to last year, the month is filled with many smaller festivities, rather than a big event like when we were still getting content in the early 2020s.
I have to admit I'm disappointed with the rollout of Scoobtober these past couple years. I wish WB would go back to only listing anything new coming out. The press release seems like AI slop to me. It reads as if they asked AI to generate anything current related to Scooby, and then copy/pasted it as the press release without checking anything. I think it's disrespectful to the fans to present the info in this way. Looking through the paragraphs-long press release, there are only five new things happening in Scoobtober. The rest are random brand collabs that were announced a while back, or upcoming things that aren't even happening in October. I hope that moving forward, WB will make these announcements in a way that actually respects fans instead of a poorly-edited info dump. Here is a much simpler to read version of the press release that removes anything that's already been announced: The biggest event is, of course, the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated Complete Series Blu-Ray on October 20. Despite the long press release, this is surprisingly mentioned nowhere. The only other release will be a vinyl of the Scooby-Doo Lo-Fi album, which released last fall. An exact release date was not announced, but it will come out in mid-October. The month also features several new Scooby collabs with various brands. The Tiki Solitaire TriPeaks mobile game is hosting a Scooby-Doo themed challenge from September 22-November 23. Nestle Toll House has released Scooby-Doo Halloween cookie dough. A contest is also being run through Scooby-Doo's official Instagram beginning October 1. Fans can enter a sweepstakes to see Simple Plan on Warped Tour on November 14. Three people will win VIP tickets, plus travel vouchers towards their hotel and flight. As usual Cartoon Network, Boomerang and MeTV Toons will be running Scooby content all month long. Here's the schedule: Programming Cartoon Network
Boomerang
MeTV Toons October 4 - Ghoul School October 11 - Reluctant Werewolf October 18 - Boo Brothers October 25 - A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle & Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hydes (this may be a re-airing of the Svengoolie-hosted show from last year) The legendary missing King Kong scene from "Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hydes" has been found! The scene was discovered by the team of Scooby fans on Reddit who have been searching for the missing scenes all year. They had previously found the missing scenes from "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall," and also helped in finding another 30-second missing scene from "Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hydes" this summer.
The King Kong scene was found through an off-air VHS collector, VHSCollectorKyle. Kyle had a 1986 recording of the episode from WMSN in Madison, WI, which contained the missing scene. It's worth noting that a number of the missing scenes have been found via 1986 airings from this station, including Batman's counterfeiting speech from "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" and "The Secret of Shark Island." The scene has not aired on television since 1989, and was not included on the 2019 DVD release of the episode. I want to give a huge thank you to the team of Reddit fans searching for these scenes. For those unaware of what they've been doing to get these scenes, they've put so much work into this. They've been reaching out to collectors who have copies of old 1980s TV broadcasts, contacted places like the Library of Congress, and done a lot to raise awareness about the missing scenes in general. It's incredible they've found four scenes this year! Now that this scene has been found, we only have three episodes left with missing scenes. "Wednesday Is Missing," "A Good Medium Is Rare" and "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" each still have two minutes of footage missing. It's worth noting that the Reddit team has determined the missing scene from "Wednesday Is Missing" is in the second half of the episode. They were able to get a tape of the first half of the episode, and there is no missing scene in the first 22 minutes.  This wasn't a poll anybody suggested, but I thought it made sense to do given we did one for Shaggy. We've already done a poll for Scooby. I think Fred and Daphne would be cheat codes to winning each other's, so I don't think it's worth doing a poll for them.
Since a couple of these are obscure: Adam is from Knight Time Terror. Daphne and Fred are included because of the overcomplicated romance plot in Velma where she was in love with all of the main characters lol. Here are the results for last week's poll: Who is your favorite person Shaggy has dated? Crystal - 42 Googie - 15 Velma - 12 Mary Jane - 5 Amelia - 2 Betty - 1 Rachel - 0 Gigi - 0  We are kicking off a brand new post series on the blog! Scooby-Doo, Who Inspired You?does a deep dive into the pop culture, and classic films/television that inspired our favorite cartoon canine. This week, we're taking a look at a classic character who inspired Shaggy's appearance and personality.
It's been well-publicized that the sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis served as inspiration for Scooby. When the creators of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? were developing the characters, they took significant inspiration from Maynard G. Krebs when writing Shaggy. Maynard was played by Bob Denver, who you might recognize as playing Gilligan on Gilligan's Island. Looking at the picture above, the physical similarities are pretty obvious: both have goaties, have baggy clothing, and their hair is messy and, well, shaggy lol. Maynard Krebs is commonly thought of as the first beatnik on television. Shaggy and Maynard's similarities in personality are less discussed. Shaggy's tendency to use hipster slang and buzzwords comes from Maynard, who would often speak in a laidback way using hippie vernacular. You may find it surprising that Shaggy's tendency towards fear also comes from Maynard, although not in the way you'd expect. Instead of being afraid of ghosts and monsters, Maynard is terrified of social convention: specifically marriage, police and especially work. A running joke of Dobie Gillis is that Maynard cowers when anyone mentions the idea of work, often repeating the word in disbelief. Sometimes he will also yelp, faint, run away, or jump with fear. This may have inspired the gag of Shaggy jumping into Scooby's arms. I've never seen the show before, but this is a hilarious running joke imo. I will be sure to keep Maynard's strategy in my back pocket the next time I have to do something I don't want to do lol. That about wraps up the first post of this new series! Next time, I'm going to watch a movie that inspired one of the most classic episodes of the franchise. I actually have another small aspect of this post series that I haven't yet announced. Once a month, I'm going to be watching a classic horror movie that inspired an episode of the franchise. In the post, I'll talk about how it inspired the Scooby episode, and then share a short review of the movie. If anyone else is interested in watching along and sharing their review in the comments, I'll be doing this "book club" style and announcing what film I'll be watching that month in advance. I'm going to try to keep it to movies available for free. Eventually, I might also do the occasional book, as mystery novels like Nancy Drew and the Famous Five have been cited for inspiring aspects of Scooby. Our October movie will be And Then There Were None from 1945! It is a film based on the Agatha Christie novel that inspired "A Night of Fright Is No Delight." The movie is available for free on Amazon Prime Video and the Roku Channel. For those who don't have either of those, it is available on the site Xumo Play, which is a legal free streaming service. For those who want to watch along, I'll be discussing the film on Friday, October 9.  For those wondering, Betty from the Puppy Hour short "Double Trouble Date." The vote for last week's poll was pretty unanimous. As one of the people who voted for that option, I'm really hopeful Warner Archive releases The Scooby-Doo Show on Blu-Ray next! It's so silly that four of the episodes from that show are still unreleased, despite it being one of the most popular shows in the franchise.
What Scooby show would you like to see released next on Blu-Ray? The Scooby-Doo Show - 26 The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The Complete Series - 10 Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! - 9 The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries - 6 What's New Scooby-Doo? - 6 The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo - 4 The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show - 3 A Pup Named Scooby-Doo - 3 Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! - 3 Scooby-Doo & Guess Who? - 2 The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show - 1 The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour - 1 Velma - 1 The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour - 0  At long last, the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The Complete Series Blu-Ray set is available for pre-order. Warner Archive has partnered with MovieZyng to release the set. Similarly to the Zombie Island Blu-Ray last fall, MovieZyng is the only place where the set is currently available. This is potentially a result of the production issues that have gotten the set pushed back twice. Thanks to Jinkies for the info! The back cover has also been revealed on their site. Check it out below:   Warner Archive has announced that the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated Complete Series set has once again been delayed. The Blu-Ray was originally set for release today, after originally being pushed back from August 25. Warner Archive shared on Facebook that the set has continued to experience production delays that have prevented its release. Several other shows also were announced to experience delays, so the issue is likely not specific to the SDMI set.
Before Joe Jonas achieved worldwide fame as one of the Jonas Brothers, he was in Scooby-Doo! On their recent podcast episode featuring Joey King, Joe shared that his first ever acting role was a Scooby-Doo commercial for Burger King. You can watch the commercial above. In the podcast, Joe shares that the commercial was filmed on his 8th birthday. He had to wear a face mold, which involved putting straws up his nose for an hour and a half to keep the face mold on. Because the first take didn't work, he had to come back to film a second day and redo the mold again. Joe discusses filming the commercial in the podcast linked at the bottom of this post (I have it set to start at the time when they start discussing it for anyone who wants to watch). Note that in the clip, he mentions that it's the live action film when Joey asks if it was for Spooky Island. I think he may have misremembered, though. It wouldn't line up with the copyright date or the fact that the commercial is animated. I'd guess it was for Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders given the 2000 copyright date. A huge thank you to everyone who's followed along with the fun facts for any amount of these past 625 weeks! This idea originally started through doing a rewatch of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and realizing how many cool Easter Eggs and pop culture references there were in the show. When I started this back in September 2014, I never imagined I'd be doing these for the next 12 years lol. It's been really fun posting these every Monday. Researching for these posts has taught me so much I never knew about Scooby. A quick search of my fun fact spreadsheet shows around 120-ish of these fun facts were suggested by readers of the blog. I think most regular readers of this blog have suggested at least one fun fact over the years. Thank you so much to anyone who's suggested a fun fact over the years. It was awesome getting to spotlight other people's ideas, and many of your suggestions taught me something too! Although it will be a little strange not to post these every Monday anymore, I'm really excited to start the Scooby-Doo, Who Inspired You? post series, which is coming September 25! They discuss this fun fact at 28:21-29:38 in this video:  Happy 57th anniversary to Scooby-Doo! The past few years have been rough for Scooby, but it's given me so much hope to see all of what's to come next year for the franchise. It's felt amazing to get all the announcements on Scooby-Doo: Origins this summer after such a long dry spell. Next year sounds like it's going to be amazing for the franchise. So happy to see Scooby come back stronger than ever after this challenging period.
Today's poll is a slight tweak on the actual suggestion, which was "what DVD/Blu-Ray do you think should be released next?" We've already done a DVD poll; however, we have never covered the Blu-Rays. With us having received the Laff a Lympics Blu-Ray earlier this year and (hopefully) the SDMI Blu-Ray on Tuesday, I thought this would be a fun question! Speaking of the franchise's future, let's take a look at when people think the next Scooby movie is coming. It's a pretty even split between these next 5 years, but a slightly larger majority voted for next year. When will the next Scooby DTV be released? Next year - 17 2 years - 15 3-5 years - 15 We will get a documentary on the disappearance of Scooby films before the next film comes out - 12 Never - 3 5-10 years - 2 10+ years - 0 |
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