As I posted about a few weeks ago, some old concept art and storyboards from SCOOB! have recently surfaced thanks to the Behind the Scoobs Instagram account. In that post, I did a brief write-up in the linked post about how the film drastically changed from what it was originally supposed to be. I was enjoying following their SCOOB! concept art while they were posting, and I was inspired to do a deeper dive on how the original film would have differed from what we ended up getting. From what I can find, there isn't one comprehensive article that tells the story of the original concept for SCOOB!, so I thought it would be fun to compile that story myself, and share it with you all through interviews, concept art and news articles. Just so it's clear, all of the concept art and other materials were found and shared previously with the fandom around the time SCOOB! came out, so I am not linking to any new information that hasn't been seen before.
Disclaimer: All of the concept art I'm linking to is all publicly available on the web and can be viewed by anyone. All concept art is owned by the individual artists and Warner Brothers-Discovery, and will be credited to the respective artists in each instance they are referenced throughout the post. To avoid any potential copyright or crediting issues, I will be linking to the places where the concept art is posted on the Internet rather than including the images directly in this post. I do not take credit for any of the concept art linked to. In addition, there is no definitive source to tell us what the movie would have been about. This is just me piecing things together based on my own interpretation of the interviews, concept art, and news articles that are out there, and I make no claims as to whether my interpretations are correct or not. If any of the artists or anyone at Warner-Brothers Discovery has any issues with me sharing links to this publicly available concept art, please don't hesitate to reach out and I will be happy to remove the links from this post. For those who don't know, SCOOB! was originally announced as far back as August 2013 via Variety. Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, who produced the first two live action movies, were set to produce the film. Matt Lieberman was the first person hired to write the script. Another announcement was later made in June 2014, sharing Randall Green had joined the writing team, and also that it would "reboot" the franchise. Early concepts featured a much more experimental tone, involving the Mystery Inc. gang joining forces with former villains to stop a larger threat. In a storyboard posted on Nassos Vakalis's art portfolio website (the third one in the second row), The Creeper joined forces with Simone from Zombie Island to stop some demonic creatures. This concept was later scrapped. On the movie's release day in 2020, Matt Lieberman shared in an interview with SyFyWire that SCOOB! originally was titled S.C.O.O.B., standing for Special Covert Organization of Otherworldly Beings. Despite the acronym being written out of the movie, the title was kept. A different interview with Matt Lieberman confirmed 80% of the basic plot of the film stayed the same in the final version; it was just the atmosphere and scenes that changed. In August 2015, it was announced that Tony Cervone would direct the film, and his wife Allison Abbate would help produce it alongside Roven and Suckle. It was also announced that Dan Povenmire would executive produce the film. In April 2016, Entertainment Weekly reported that the film could lead to a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe, providing the official tagline of "our first shot at unlocking the whole Hanna-Barbera Universe." In September 2016, Dax Shepard was announced as a writer and director for the film by Variety, and the release date was announced as September 21, 2018. In May 2017, Variety reported an update that the release date would be pushed back to May 15, 2020. According to a Variety article from 2017, S.C.O.O.B. was originally supposed to be Hanna-Barbera's version of the Avengers/Justice League, with a group of heroes teaming up to stop Dick Dastardly and Muttley. A piece of concept art from 2015 by character designer Paul Sullivan on his website, shows one of the concepts that was considered for this "Justice League" of Hanna-Barbera characters. As can be seen from this art, the original concept included more than just Blue Falcon, Dynomutt, Dee Dee and Captain Caveman. Jabberjaw, Penelope Pitstop, Atom Ant, and Grape Ape were also originally a part of the film, but were written out in the final version. An art portfolio page by Alex Konstad shows some much darker, more sinister concept art for the film was at one point considered. This page also shows that Captain Caveman appears to have originally had a much bigger role in the film than just the brief scene that he got. According to Konstad's Instagram, he pitched The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones as the villain, similar to how Scrappy was made the villain of the first live action film. In the original version of the film, there was a mystery with a zombie named Dr. Bandersnatch planned as a villain. Artist Bill Robinson posted designs on his Instagram for the villain, which appear to have maybe been inspired by Dr. Coffin from "The Harum Scarum Sanitarium." Robinson's Instagram caption mentions the character was from a "cut scene," meaning it could have also just been an opening scene, rather than part of the main plot. Sheriff Stone would have also made an appearance in the film, according to another Instagram post by Bill Robinson. The film originally appears to have gone much deeper into Greek lore, as can be seen in a few other storyboard animatics on artist Nassos Valakis's website. The Greek lore looks like it would have been more heavily embedded into the whole film with a darker tone. Alex Konstad's site features captions on some of the concept art like "The Gates of Hell" and "It Follows," which may further hint to the darker tone this film originally had. A design on John Nevarez's website even shows Dick Dastardly meeting what appears to be the Grim Reaper. In September 2018, it was announced by Variety that Dax Shepard was no longer involved with the project. Tony Cervone remained as the sole director, and Kelly Freamon-Craig replaced Shepard as a co-writer. It was also announced that Chris Colombus would produce the film, and that Derek Elliott and Jack Donaldson had written a previous draft of the script. This appears to have been the turning point for the film, as much of the cast and story as we know them today starting getting announced in March 2019. So, why were all these changes made? I was curious about this too, so I did some research to see if I could find any official statements from the crew who worked on the film about the shift of direction from the original version. In an interview with Michael J. Lee of RadioFree, Tony Cervone shared that a struggle the film faced is that telling the story through the lens of the broader Hanna-Barbera universe caused a sort of identity crisis for the film, because there were too many characters to be properly developed. "Scooby and Shaggy really just wanted to be Scooby and Shaggy, you know?" Cervone shares. "We spent a lot of time thinking about, "Should we create one overall look that can fill this whole universe?" Like, how are we going to create one look that accommodates Fred Jones and Dick Dastardly? They're so radically different. And we just did it the Hanna-Barbera way, and the Hanna-Barbera way mixed stuff up all the time. I knew Iwao Takamoto, and I knew a lot of the Hanna-Barbera people, and in a way, I was just kind of listening to them in my head, and they were all like, "Play to the characters' strengths, listen to the characters. And I think that's kind of what led us, and where we eventually wound up." Producer Pam Coats adds on to Cervone's sentiment in another interview with CinemaBlend: "At the core you want to end this movie really emotionally attached to Scooby and Shaggy, Dastardly and Muttley, and Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, and we couldn't do that with those characters there." Tony Cervone, who took part in this same interview, added "I think when we first started this was much more like Hanna-Barbera Avengers, and then somehow along the way the more time we spent with Scooby and Shaggy, we were just like, 'This is all we care about.' Scooby and Shaggy had their own gravity that took up space." In an interview with ComingSoon.net, Tony Cervone explained that Marvel's Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse was an inspiration for the creative team. "Just like “Into the Spider-Verse”, the “Spider-Man” movie Sony made, was such a great representation of New York, we wanted to do that for L.A. We wanted this movie to feel like, “I could drive down that street. I know where that is.” And we knew we would go to some very fantastical places, so we wanted our Southern California to feel idealized but still kind of real." Cervone shared. In a sense, the Avengers/Into the Spider-Verse metaphor is perhaps the best way to sum up the difference between the other version of the film, and the final version we saw. The original concept was focused on the broader Hanna-Barbera universe and was larger-than-life, similar to what Avengers is within the Marvel Universe, whereas the final version is a much more grounded picture that focused on a specific group of characters' universe, like Spider-Verse is in relation to the rest of the Marvel Universe. I had a lot of fun researching for this article, and even though I already enjoyed SCOOB!, doing this research gave me a greater appreciation for what we ended up getting. I think Cervone and everyone involved did a great job creating a very grounded, character-focused story that was still able to properly service the Hanna-Barbera universe.
35 Comments
Mr Neither
2/6/2024 04:23:26 am
Kind of highlights they knew they had messed up. Covid was likely the final nail in the coffin.
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Becker
2/6/2024 06:02:23 am
I don't know why they thought they "had messed up", because everything I read about the previous version(s) of Scoob are clearly more interesting and better than what we got. The only iffy thing about it seems to have been calling it SCOOB despite being a Hanna-Barbera crossover movie first, but they could've still reaffirmed Scooby and the gang's main role in the movie without changing so many things.
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Mr Neither
2/7/2024 07:01:59 am
Think you misinterpreted what I meant. I meant they messed up with what we got in the end. I agree that a lot of what is suggested here is quite interesting. In the end it felt like they were trying to hard, pandering to to many different characters and didn't stick to the simple basics of Scooby, a good mystery and a good villain.
Becker
2/7/2024 08:52:44 am
Oh, I thought you meant they changed the approach and direction of the film because they thought they had messed up originally. 2/7/2024 01:13:51 pm
I'm probably one of the few (at least in this comment thread) that enjoyed the SCOOB! we ended up getting. It definitely wasn't perfect and it totally makes sense why people don't enjoy it, but I thought it was cute for what it was. That said, the original version looks like it would have been a super cool film, and I honestly wish we could have gotten both the final version and the OG.
Mr Neither
2/8/2024 07:18:34 am
WB have run Scooby into the ground with terrible crossovers and sequels in recent years. SCOOB Holiday Haunt could have been the first decent thing we've had in years.
Becker
2/8/2024 08:21:47 am
Some of the crossovers aren't too bad tbf, even some of the recent ones 2/8/2024 12:14:09 pm
There are a few recent crossovers I've enjoyed, like Courage and Krypto, but I agree with Mr Neither that we need a break from the crossovers and sequels. I wouldn't mind getting a crossover once every couple years, but Guess Who and most of the movies all being crossovers has been too much imo.
Mr Neither
2/10/2024 03:52:26 am
Just looking now, Since 2013 less than a 1/4 of Scooby Movies have been original ideas solely featuring the gang: 2/10/2024 09:37:10 am
I would say I liked the majority of the recent films, but if "decent" means strong films, yeah, I totally agree with you that Shaggy's Showdown was the strongest film we've gotten in recent years, with Straight Outta Nowhere second. I hope we can get away from crossovers (or at least not have them so frequently) and start getting movies of that quality again soon.
Mr Neither
2/15/2024 06:13:08 am
Totally agreed, but I feel until WB gets taken over by someone with a little sense, it won't happen. 2/15/2024 01:26:26 pm
It's funny because I just said the same thing in reply to another comment on a different subject on this week's fun fact thread, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The current execs are stuck on a narrow idea of what Scooby can be (at least imo), and I don't think we'll get anything too different without a change of mindset.
Becker
2/6/2024 06:33:58 am
The more we learn about this movie the more I think the original version of this movie was significantly better. Sure, it would've still been an HB crossover film, even more so, but in that case market the movie properly by saying it's a big HB movie (like they used to do back in the days) with Scooby and Shaggy as the lead characters.
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2/7/2024 01:09:56 pm
I assume what was meant by the "the plot is 80% the same" comment is that the same basic plot points where there all throughout the development process, like the stuff with having to stop Dick Dastardly and the Cerberus legend was clearly the same from the original version. But yeah, these were unquestionably two very different movies.
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Juan
2/6/2024 08:38:06 am
"The Creeper joined forces with Lena from Zombie Island to stop some demonic creatures."
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Juan
2/6/2024 08:58:25 am
Looking back at the storyboards, I think it was supposed to be Simone and not Lena. Her outfit and the necklace match Simone, only difference is the long hair.
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2/7/2024 01:17:50 pm
Yeah, I think you're right about Simone. The way her hair was drawn at first looked like a headband, which made me think Lena, but watching it again it does look more like Simone. I edited the article and fixed it, thanks!
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Okraila
2/6/2024 05:06:38 pm
Wow man, while i do think the doctor would have been a cutscene, the darker tone would be so fucking perfect. What a shame - but i do like that they picked focusing on the characters rather than the universe. Shame holiday haunt wasnt picked up, looked better than the og movie, makes me wonder what a full scoob 2 would be about tho
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2/7/2024 12:55:57 pm
Yeah, based on the couple storyboard animatics and pics that we've seen from Holiday Haunt, I think it would have been a really cool film.
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Matt
2/7/2024 09:14:24 am
The more I learn about Scoob, the more negative I become on what we got. I still don’t outright hate it like some, but it feels like a product of scaling back due to turmoil so none of what I’ve learned surprises me
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Juan
2/7/2024 10:17:26 am
Don't worry buddy, I'll gladly do the hating for you.
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Becker
2/7/2024 11:16:03 am
Same.
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2/7/2024 12:57:41 pm
Yeah, I do think some of their scaling back was due to either turmoil, or maybe they were worried about the backlash at the time for it being more adult-centered. One of the storyboard animatics I'd posted a couple weeks ago featured Meryl Streep calling the gang "dumbasses" when she's unmasked, so clearly the original version was going to be more adult-focused humor in addition to having a darker tone.
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theangel
2/7/2024 04:38:33 pm
I don't really have interest in seeing any other WB characters besides the Mystery gang. I didn't grow up on Dynomutt or Captain Caveman so when they pop up in Scooby media I feel nothing. I had this same problem with the crossover Mystery Inc episode, like I'm supposed to get excited for these obscure characters whose shows I've never seen. If they wanted to make a Wacky Races movie they should have done just that, if they wanted to make a Scooby movie they should have done just that, merging all these characters and stories into one MCU-type deal just doesn't work. Especially so when the characters brought in aren't especially notable outside of the obvious bunch.
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2/7/2024 05:30:02 pm
That's sort of why I suggested above that it would have been cool for them to split this idea into two different films. They could have released the SCOOB! that we got, and then also released the "Hanna-Barbera Avengers" idea they had as a separate film. I think that would have appeased both crowds, and if they were marketing the other film as a "big Hanna-Barbera movie," maybe they wouldn't have had to worry as much about focusing on Scooby, as there would already be a separate movie focusing on him and the gang. Idk, just a thought.
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Becker
2/7/2024 05:51:54 pm
It wouldn't have appeased both sides at all, because the Scoob we got was not at all a proper Scooby film, which is what virtually everyone wanted. I don't think there's any world where the Scoob we got would satisfy people no matter what came after it (like, Holiday Haunt potentially being good wouldn't have made people think Scoob was good). And you can't release the 2 versions one after another if the basic plot and the roster of characters are almost the same besides some sub-plots and a few more HB characters in one of them. 2/8/2024 12:11:01 pm
Sorry, I worded my comment poorly. I meant we still could have gotten a SCOOB! that adhered more to the traditional Scooby formula to appease that side, and then we also could have gotten the HB Avengers idea as a separate film to appease the other side.
James Dixon
2/8/2024 03:23:09 am
This is how I intend to document the movie on my site.
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2/8/2024 12:12:09 pm
Cool that you're planning to document this stuff too! There's a lot of cool info out there about the film, and I was surprised that it wasn't really documented all in one place like this (at least, not that I found).
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Lamont
2/9/2024 11:34:30 am
All of this is so fascinating! But I’m happy with what we got. A Hanna Barbera Cinematic Universe does sound fun, but that probably would’ve been too much for a Scooby Doo. Which is why I’m still hoping that Scooby Doo would have crossover Hanna Barbera movies with some (probably not all) of the HB series. I’d be down for a Laff A Lympics movie too lol.
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2/9/2024 01:02:51 pm
A Laff-a-Lympics movie would be interesting, although only if it had a coherent plot. I wouldn't want it to just be one long string of different events like the series was lol.
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Becker
2/9/2024 12:30:08 pm
Fun fact: Today marks one year since the Velma season 1 finale premiered. I still remember my ceaseless rants and inexorable ire throughout the whole month of the series' release lol. I find it interesting that in the past year WB has actively avoided promoting Velma while at the same time lowkey confirming we're still getting more of this show relatively soon. Such a strange approach... it seems like they're genuinely embarrassed and scared to even utter the show's name, yet willing to keep it going purely for the hate-watch numbers... I really don't get why you'd risk further brand reputation damage for some streaming revenue which I guarantee won't be as high as the first season's anyway. Everyone is more than fed up with the amount of Velma we've already got, why would people bother this time? Greed overpowers common sense, I guess.
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2/9/2024 01:02:03 pm
I hadn't even thought about it, but that's wild it's been a year already. It is really strange how it's essentially been radio silence since the day that it ended. Nobody in the fandom really wants to talk about it (and rightfully so lol), and WB hasn't directly said a word about it. We've heard nothing about it other than the Halloween special, and that wasn't even really an "announcement" as it was just found by looking in a database. I agree with you that it's clear WB is embarrassed by it. I was talking with someone in the fandom about it a few months back, and they brought up the point that it's possible that WB ordered 21 episodes as "1 season," and the decision was made later to split it up into two seasons of 10 episodes each (plus the Halloween special). No idea whether that theory's true or not, since the end of episode 10 definitely felt like the end of a season, but it could be one explanation. Greed is probably the more likely explanation, though, especially with the current state of WB.
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Becker
2/9/2024 02:49:40 pm
Yeah, they confirmed season 2 in roundabout fashion before season 1 finished airing and we've heard literally nothing about it since. My prediction is they'll acknowledge the show's existence only when we get close to the release date and they have to start putting out trailers and stuff (plus the Halloween special), and as soon as season 2 ends they'll pretend it never happened and ignore its existence again. Because there's simply no way they renew it for a 3rd season... I refuse to believe that's the reality we could live in lol. But yes, I do think they ordered 2 seasons off the bat when they greenlit the show; or at least greenlit a second season in 2022 before the first season came out, which we know for a fact is true since it's official that they started production on season 2 in 2022 before season 1 released. I don't think WB expected the show to be anywhere near as rancid as it was, which is why they did their classic move of greenlighting 2 seasons of a Scooby show from the get-go (they've done it with the last 5 Scooby shows I think). So when they saw how abominably awful it was and that literally everyone despised it to death, they were probably like "Oh shit.. what do we do now? Do we can it or keep going?". And I think the only reason they've decided not to throw it in the bin during production is the ratings and viewing numbers (which is why I said greed overpowers common sense). But it's still horrible it's getting made. 2/9/2024 07:28:54 pm
Considering that they haven't acknowledged it at all since season 1 ended, I think your prediction is definitely what's going to happen. What makes it especially awful for me is that we're getting season 2 of this terrible show that hardly anybody likes, yet they canned Holiday Haunt and Haunted High Rise, which the majority of the fanbase actually wanted to see. It wouldn't bother me as much if those films hadn't been cancelled, but it just sucks knowing that we could have had great content, yet we're just getting this because WB was greedy and took advantage of high viewing numbers (despite that I've probably met like two people in the entire fandom who actually liked this show). I guess it's somewhat assuring that there's almost zero likelihood this is being renewed again for season 3. I don't think WB is that dumb, nor do I think they'd be motivated to renew a show that that literally never talk about/promote lol. Also, strange to think the last time a Scooby season got more than two seasons was nearly two decades ago. Leave a Reply. |
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