It’s been a rough year for Warner Bros. Animation, particularly Scooby and the gang. Short of the news of the Scoob sequel’s shelving, Warner Bros. surprised audiences with another new adventure for Mystery Inc, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!. The trailer and synopsis for the new movie can be viewed below.
Mystery Inc. has cracked the case to top all cases! They’ve tracked down Coco Diablo, the head of the notorious costume crime syndicate that colludes The Black Knight, Space Kook and the Ghost Diver. With Coco and her kitty in prison, Mystery Inc. thinks that they can finally enjoy a break. Wrong! Suddenly, menacing doppelgänger ghosts of the Scooby crew and favorite classic foes show up in Coolsville to threaten Halloween. Now it’s up to the meddling kids – and their unlikely new partner Coco – to unmask the latest scoundrel and save Halloween! For Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, with trick-or-treating on the line – this time it’s personal!
Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! follows the gang as they’re gearing up for Halloween. But when familiar faces begin to return to cause trouble, it’s up to Scooby and the gang to save the day! A fun note about this particular adventure is the return of several classic foes from the original Scooby-Doo Where Are You! show.
The movie will star Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo and Fred Jones, Grey DeLisle as Daphne Blake, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy Rogers, and Kate Micucci as Velma Dinkley. Cecilla Aranovich (Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog) is credited as producer and director. Mike Ryan is credited with penning the script, Sam Register (Looney Tunes Cartoons) is executive producing.
Scooby-Dooby-Doo!
Scooby-Doo continues to be a major property for Warner Bros, despite the recent controversies. Audiences can’t get enough of the gang coming across a good spooky mystery. The show premiered in 1969 and ran for three seasons, but continued to live on in numerous spin-offs, reruns, and of course lots of movies! Currently there are over thirty direct-to-video animated films from the franchise (not counting the made for television films, both live action and animated). The characters made their way to the theater three times, Scooby-Doo in 2002, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed in 2004, and Scoob! in 2020.
Scoob! was initially penned as the first in a hopeful Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe, set in a world brimming with throwbacks and Easter Eggs to the other characters from shows like Whacky Racers, Captain Caveman, and The Blue Falcon. The sequel, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, was well under way, before Warner Bros. suddenly cancelled the project earlier in August. This news came shortly after the announcement of the Batgirl film’s cancellation and has been followed by a steady list of further cancelations of projects from the company. Co-Writer Paul Dini expressed his grief over the cancellation, stating that the film was nearly completed. The film even had the recording for the score set up and ready to go. Despite the cancellation, producer Tony Cervone allowed the recording to happen anyway.
The decision to allow Trick or Treat to go to completion, while letting Holiday Haunt get the chopping block, is certainly a head-scratcher. Warner Bros. was clear that the completion status of the projects did not matter. The only notable difference is the fact that Trick or Treat is also getting a physical DVD release, meanwhile Holiday Haunt was probably planned for a theatrical release followed by a shift to HBO Max. Perhaps it’s more difficult to bury a warehouse of DVDs than to just delete a file from a server. Regardless of the confusion (and frustration) of the state of Warner Bros. animation, Trick or Treat looks like more of the same charming adventures for fans of those meddling kids and their dog!