***THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SCOOBYFAN.NET NOVEMBER 10TH, 2013***
Full disclosure: I’m a huge fan of both properties.
I’ve been a Scooby fan since ’99 and a WWE fan off and on my entire life.
And never once did I see this coming!!!
In recent years, WWE has been trying to go in a more kid friendly direction, turning away from the edgier content they produced in the late 90’s that brought them such high acclaim and condemnation.
So back in August of 2012 I was a bit surprised when this was announced.
Many WWE fans thought (or hoped) the PG era of WWE was just a fad but this has made it quite clear that they were committed to it.
When it was announced, one of the big things that I was stunned by was the anger and disgust I read…from Scooby fans!!!
Internet Wrestling fans are notoriously angry and will trash anything without even giving it a chance, yet the majority of what I read from WWE fans was along the lines of “Scooby-Doo? That’s still a thing?”.
And its not just WWE fans, on twitter, whenever I talk about Scooby, without fail, I always get at least one person that has no clue that Scooby-Doo is still a viable franchise.
The majority of what I read from Scooby fans was along the lines of “WWE? This is gonna be horrible! This is the end for Scooby.” and wild speculation that WWE was going to force casting changes just because Freddie Prinze Jr works for them now.
I’ve given this a whole lot of thought in the year or so since this has been announced and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Scooby fans are out of their freakin’ minds.
This movie has nothing but upsides, especially for WB/Scooby and there is one big reason why.
Marketing!
The last time I checked Monday Night Raw gets just under 4 million viewer in the US alone.
Friday Night Smackdown gets around 2 million.
Now if you conservatively factor in some crossover between the two, and I know for a fact not every wrestling fan watches both shows, that is over 4 million viewers.
Based on what I’ve seen, one third of that knows that Scooby-Doo is “still a thing” so you have 2.6 million people that remember Scooby fondly, again from my experiences, from their childhoods.
Not realizing in the past 15 years there have been 20+ DTV movies, 4 Live-Action movies, and 3 animated series.
And with WB announcing a new theatrical movie, though it’s probably still two years away, this could bring Scooby back to the front of their minds in a way WB has struggled too.
WWE is a global company that produces 5+ hours of TV a week, reaching 10’s of millions of viewers, and is expanding every year into new countries.
So in the end, WWE solidifies itself as a family friendly company and Scooby gets much needed exposure on a world wide stage to an audience that may not even know about it anymore.
I hope Scooby fans get over whatever hang ups they have and prepare for a potential Scooby boom!
I also hope for a healthy respect for both IP’s.
And believe me, once I see the movie, if that isn’t there, I’ll start lighting torches and buying pitchforks.
***2023 UPDATE***
I feel safe in saying I was proven right on this one, for a few reasons.
1. Not only was this a damn good movie, it did well enough that it got a follow-up. Somebody must have liked it beyond just WWE watchers.
2. WWE marketed the hell out of it, and, indirectly or not, continue to do so. Every March/April and August I see this pop up in stores again, around the time that WWE does WrestleMania & SummerSlam. Somebody realized that WWE does a handful of big events every year and having this movie attached to that wagon would be an easy way to move copies. Also, at the time it released, WWE had a few segments on RAW promoting it and the wrestlers that were in the movie were posting about it on social media. This is, without a doubt, the most exposure Scooby has gotten in at least a decade. The only thing that could have come close would have been Scoob!, but that got fucked hard by COVID.
3. Scooby fans were way shittier about this movie than WWE fans. WWE fans mostly seemed to just ignore it. While, obviously, not all Scooby fans hated it, the vocal ones acted like this was Scooby slumming it. The old “wrestling is fake” bullshit was spewed yet again, with absolutely no irony from the watchers of the talking dog.
4. We did get a bit of a Scooby boom. Once again, COVID fucked it, but we had a beautifully animated theatrical movie drop just 6 years after the March 2014 release of this flick.
One of the downsides I didn’t see coming though was that WB would be chasing the dragon of the attention they got off of WrestleMania Mystery for the next decade. KISS, Batman, Celebrity Chefs, Elvira, Krypto The Superdog, 52 episodes of Scooby-Doo And Guess Who?, and that’s not even mentioning all of the celebrity and crossovers that were shoehorned into Scoob! It is crazy to contemplate the sheer amount of crossovers and cameos we have gotten in the last ten years. The argument will be made by some that this ushered in a safe and bland era for the franchise that may have caused WB to lose faith in Scooby’s ability to stand on his own and, subsequently, may have put the franchise on ice for the foreseeable future.
I would counter that by saying celebrities and crossovers have been a part of the franchise from almost the beginning, so you can’t lay the blame on this one crossover. If you want to make this argument, I hope you have the good sense to pinpoint that laser focus on the falling dominos of successive execs at WB that dropped the ball or gave dumbass notes and directives that were an albatross to the creative process. That demanded nonsensically retconned sequels, stunt castings, wacky celebrities, cheaper animation, and watered down attempts at action movie plots. Don’t blame this singular crossover.
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