In 2020, Warner Bros. bumped the brand new animated film Scoob! from theatrical release and released it digitally instead. Now their Christmas-themed follow up, Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, seems destined for a similar path.
THR reports that a change in leadership at the studio has led to a few surprising shakeups in their HBO Max release slate, which includes the shelving of the $40 million animated film Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, along with DC’s Batgirl.
The HBO Max-exclusive holiday film would’ve followed the young version of the Mystery Incorporated gang. The plot synopsis: “To celebrate Scooby Doo’s first Christmas, 10-year-old Shaggy and the gang take him to a holiday-themed resort owned by Fred’s favorite Uncle Ned. When the park is beset by a ghostly haunting, the kids must solve a 40-year-old mystery to save the resort and show Scooby the true meaning of Christmas.”
The voice cast for Holiday Haunt includes Frank Welker, Iain Armitage, Ariana Greenblatt, McKenna Grace, Pierce Gagnon, Mark Hamill, Cristo Fernandez, Michael McKean, Andre Braugher, and Ming-Na Wen. Michael Kurinsky and Bill Haller directed from a script by Paul Dini and Tony Cervone.
Much of the cast reprised their roles from 2020’s Scoob!, which told the never-before told stories of Scooby-Doo’s origins and the greatest mystery in the career of the group known as Mystery Inc.
The 2020 film revealed how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined with young detectives Fred, Velma and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now, with hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world.
A first look at Scoob!: Holiday Haunt was included in the now-deleted HBO Max 2022 preview video. Whether it will get an eventual release remains up in the air at this time.