As ‘Scooby-Doo’ turns 21, fans mourn the racy film that could have been

Scooby-Doo is a beloved children’s franchise – well, most of the time – that usually sticks to men-in-masks as its villains, someone with a primarily personal vendetta they’re acting out on. When it does get supernatural, the series tends to end the tale on a lighter note, and there’s usually a well-rounded story arc when things are all said and done.

James Gunn had other plans when he wrote the script for the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo, as compiled by Twitter user NotGwendalupe. The film’s development underwent significant changes before it hit the big screens, and there was even going to be some pretty racy content before the film’s retool.

As NotGwendalupe notes, the film initially had some frank discussions of sexual topics, with Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar) slated to imply that she broke up with Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.) because he slept with numerous fans. She also says that she ‘fake-liked’ being intimate with him. At one point in the film, a drunken Velma (Linda Cardellini) is supposed to get on top of a bar, take her sweater off, and dance around in her bra. Footage of the scene was filmed, and as NotGwendalupe says, it was even used in promotional tv spots for the film.

The script also puts much more emphasis on Velma’s gay undertones; she’s implied to have a crush on Daphne at several points, and they even share a kiss. Daphne and Fred also have an argument in which they call each other ‘gay’ (well, it was released in 2002), and it’s said that Fred was actually supposed to be gay and all of these moments ended up on the cutting room floor, however, because parents were outraged. Velma was even given a quasi-love interest to quell rumors. In the second film, she’d be given a boyfriend, played by Seth Green, just to make things abundantly clear.

There are also more jokes about cannabis in the script. The final film does have a few jokes about it, to be fair (Mary Jane is, like, Shaggy’s favorite name!), but the script was going to be more overt about Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) being a stoner. This was to be a nod to the popular fan idea that the character is always hungry because he’s indulged in some of the devil’s lettuce.

Ultimately, Warner Bros. opted to play things safe, and Scooby-Doo was trimmed down to its current PG rating. But still, you can’t help but wonder what a PG-13 version of the film, aimed at teens, would have been like. Things certainly would have been interesting. It took twenty years for something like this to be tried again, and the result, Velma, has been pretty divisive. One can only wonder how an early 2000s America would have handled the film.