‘Scooby-Doo!’: How Do the Live-Action Casts Compare to the Animated Original?

In 1969, an oversized, talking Great Dane with a predilection for Dagwood sandwiches and a distinctly cowardly streak took over Saturday mornings with his unique humor and knack for stumbling into mystery-solving. Alongside the rest of the gang at Mystery Inc., the lovable mutt named Scooby-Doo quickly became a sensation, and then a full-blown franchise that has endured almost 60 years.

Now, more than 15 animated series, over 40 animated films, and four live-action movies later, the talking canine and his teen companions of Fred, Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy are still going strong, with new cartoons and features continuing to be developed. The puppers named Scooby-Doo remains one of the most prolific and constantly rebooted franchises in animation history. He never really goes away but simply reinvents himself for the next generation.

A new live-action Scooby-Doo series is in development at Netflix, expected around 2027, and it’s taking the franchise back to the very beginning. Set at a summer camp, Scooby-Doo: Origins will explore how the Mystery Inc. gang first came together, with a younger cast tackling a season-long mystery in a tone said to echo Stranger Things. It marks the franchise’s first live-action TV series and brings the beloved characters into a more modern, serialized storytelling format.

But as this new version reimagines Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Fred for a new generation, how does it stack up against the franchise’s earlier incarnations — from the classic 1969 cartoon, Scooby-Doo Where Are You? to the live-action films including 2002’s Scooby-Doo and 2009’s Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins — that helped define the mystery-solving team for decades? Here is a look at how the casts compare.

Scooby-Doo: Origins, TBA, Netflix