Scooby-Doo has been a big part of pop culture for decades, and the name dog and his group of human friends are now well-known. After a lot of family-friendly movies and animated shows about the team’s adventures, HBO Max is about to try something new with Velma, an adult animated show that will come out on the platform in 2023.
During the Velma panel at New York Comic Con on Thursday, HBO Max showed the first teaser trailer for the show. Velma Dinkley is voiced by Mindy Kailing. The trailer, which you can watch below, shows how self-aware the show is by having Velma write an email to HBO Max complaining about their rebooted Judy Jetson series and saying that classics should not be changed.
Then, a mysterious killer calls her from inside her house, making her angry. This leads to a lot of bloody chaos. Velma is an animated comedy show for adults that tells the story of how Velma Dinkley, the brains of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang, got her start.
Cast and Crew of the series
The complicated and colorful past of one of America’s most beloved mystery solvers is revealed in a new and funny way. In addition to being Velma’s voice, Kailing is an executive producer for the show. Charlie Grandy is in charge of the show.
As of Thursday afternoon, we know that Constance Wu from Crazy Rich Asians will play Daphne, Sam Richardson from Detroiters will play Shaggy, and Glenn Howerton from It is Always Sunny in Philadelphia will play Fred.
Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Russell Peters, Melissa Fumero, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Ken Leung, Cherry Jones, Frank Welker, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Fortune Feimster, Yvonne Orji, Sarayu Blue, Nicole Byer, Ming-Na Wen, Shay Mitchell, Debby Ryan, Kulap Vilaysak, and Karl-Anthony Towns will also be in the series.
The Velma trailer comes after a big week for fans of the character. In the animated movie Trick-or-Treat, Scooby-Doo!, fans’ long-held theories that she is a lesbian were proven to be true.
Clips from the movie, which came out this week on direct-to-video, show Velma falling in love with Coco Diablo, a fashion designer who works with the Scooby Gang against her will. Later, Velma tells Daphne about her crush, which makes Daphne joke that she “didn’t know convicted felons were [her] type.”
Fans had thought for years that Velma might be bisexual or a lesbian, and many people who worked on Scooby-Doo! had tried to turn the subtext into text.
This includes James Gunn, who wrote the live-action movies in the 2000s and tweeted in 2020 that he “tried” to make it clear that Velma, played by Linda Cardellini, was a lesbian.
When is the series coming out?
Velma has not been given a release date yet, but it is likely to come out sometime in 2023. The show is set to start on HBO Max in 2023, and the first season will have ten episodes.
