Why ‘Scooby-Doo 3’ Never Happened

It seems unfathomable now in the age of sequels and reboots and live-action adaptations, but the Scooby-Doo movies were not popular or profitable enough for Warner Bros.

The now beloved live-action Scooby-Doo films were poorly received by critics at the time, and the second film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed failed to do well at the box office when it released in 2004, destroying any hopes for a third.

In the live-action films, Matthew Lillard played Shaggy, Freddie Prinze Jr. played Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar played Daphne, and Linda Cardellini played Velma.

The first Scooby-Doo grossed $154 million in 2002, but the second film only made around $80 million domestically two years later. After the second film’s release, Lillard gave an interview where he blamed the studio for the movie’s poor performance.

“The second one didn’t do as well as it was expected to do, and I completely hold that to Warner Brothers’ fault,” he said. “I think Warner Brothers made a mistake releasing it at the time they did [March 2004]. I think the movie’s much better than the first movie, and I honestly thought it was going to do ridiculously good box office. But we had a bad timeslot. We had 13 movies open up in two weeks after we opened up. I mean, it did well, but it didn’t do great, and it needed to do great.”

A third Scooby-Doo was set to be helmed by future DC Studios head and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, who wrote the script for the first two.

“I made a deal to write and direct #3 back in 2004 but the second one, although it did well, didn’t do well enough to warrant a third, so the movie was never made,” Gunn said during an Instagram Q&A in 2020.

In a now-deleted follow-up tweet, Gunn told fans what the third film would’ve been about.

“The Mystery Ink gang are hired by a town in Scotland who complain they’re being plagued by monsters but we discover throughout the film the monsters are actually the victims & Scooby & Shaggy have to come to terms with their own prejudices & narrow belief systems. (Yes, Really!),” the director wrote on Twitter/X.

Given how much everyone loves the movies now, don’t be surprised if Warner Bros. Discovery eventually tries to make a third live-action Scooby-Doo happen.