Originally published at: Watch this fan-made grimdark SCcooby Doo reboot | Boing Boing
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If this isn’t picked up by some lazy-minded development exec at a streaming service that can negotiate the rights with Hanna-Barbera (or whoever owns the IP now) I’ll be shocked. I hope the creators of this well-crafted crowdfunded pilot get their due.
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Venture Bros had an even grimmer darker take, courtesy of Ben Edlund:
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Hey, there’s nothing wrong with ingesting a couple of scooby snacks every now and then!
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I don’t understand. How has this not been kicked off YouTube by the rights owners?
Maybe I’m cynical, but I find it hard to believe that the rights-owners would be enlightened enough to allow this.
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Haven’t watched the whole thing yet; but just from the first few minutes, that’s some mighty good production quality.
Kudos to the creators, hope it goes somewhere good for them.
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Maybe they’re not killjoys.
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Wow, just a few minutes in, they got access to some feature film level locations. Production values are better than the acting, though.
As with other attempts to “improve” Scooby Doo, this one makes the supernatural real, rather than something the Scooby Squad debunks in every episode. I don’t consider that an improvement.
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Do we need gritty reboots of all the things?
Because parody is a thing that has constitutional protections under the current set of copyright laws, primarily.
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Agreed. This recent animated version gave things a little edge without going into gritty reboot territory. I enjoyed it enough to watch the whole thing.
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It’s probably like all those Star Trek fan films that have been made.
They understand that it only enhances the fandom that makes them successful. And if it’s not done for profit- it’s perfectly legal.
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Yeah, that disappointed me. Supernatural terrors have become a cliche, the easy road to take. It’d be a greater challenge to create convincing, engaging stories that don’t have supernatural solutions yet don’t come across as silly the way the old cartoons did.
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Why do the Scoobygang all look about 35?
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That’s a tradition going back at least to the original “Beverly Hills 90210”. Some of the “teenagers” on that show had more forehead wrinkles than a corrugated box.
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Dark and gritty is fine, but if it doesn’t turn out that Fred’s parents were killed by a dude in a mask, it’s not really Scooby-Doo.
I’m assuming no trademarked names were actually used? (I.e. “Mystery Incorporated” wasn’t trademarked by the owners of Scooby.) So it’s not really “Scooby-Doo” - it’s just the story of four kids and their dog that investigate spooky mysteries and just happen to look quite familiar (wink wink). Nothing infringing in that.
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I understand it’s possible that the legal team of a major rights holding corporation are not killjoys. But statistically, I’d rate that as less likely than all the oxygen atoms in the legal department’s office all migrated to the top 2’ of the office for 2 minutes, rendering them all unconscious at exactly the time it took when a decision was being made to take legal action against this production.
I think it would be pretty hard to classify as parody. And fan-fic is not legally protected.
Legal departments have all over the world have made it clear that they’re willing to harm their business in order to justify the company having a legal department. Companies of size making smart, fan-friendly decisions are so rare as to engender considerable publicity those odd times when they don’t try and alienate their fans by every means possible.
I thought they might try something like that, but using the name “Scooby” eliminated that defense.
I’d be delighted if they actually are willing to tolerate this, but the reality is like so many things - saying “No” is safer, so almost no-one says “Yes”. (And the very rare case where saying “Yes” gets someone in trouble becomes a urban legend that is whispered into every executive’s ear as a cautionary tale.)
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I disagree, I think the argument can certainly be made…
Fair use is a thing and it’s not so simple that it’s “not legal”… it’s still very much up for debate generally speaking.
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There’s billions of hours of copyright-violating stuff on YouTube. It doesn’t get kicked unless someone happens to notice it who works on the legal team of the IP rights-holder or knows someone who does.
99% of content removal on YT is the automated content ID system which detects music. There’s no algorithm that can detect “a video set in the world of IP X” so that’s never going to get found until someone complains or a lawyer happens to see it.
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Huh. Ok, if they’re actually using the name “Scooby-Doo” (and watching the first couple minutes, they let the cat out of the bag by admitting that it’s “Based on the characters from Scooby Doo from Hanna Barbera”), then yeah, I’m surprised. The thing is, they easily could have done it without using any kind of trademarks and viewers would still know what it was.
It seems to me that stepping on the toes of copyrighted material is a lot safer than stepping on trademarks, given that those need to be defended. Seems like the best case scenario, that allows this to stay up, is that Hanna Barbera retroactively blesses this with some official status - which seems incredibly unlikely. If it were simple copyright overlap, HB could just ignore it. (Though maybe explicitly admitting whose trademark it is means HB don’t have to do anything? They could potentially just ignore it?)
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Saw the first few minutes and it’s really good! I love that it’s a real dog.
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