Unto every generation it must (apparently) arrive: A new live-action cast for a new live-action Scooby-Doo project, forced to wrestle with such deep existential questions as “How much irony am I supposed to be feeling when I, a person born in 2008, say ‘Jinkies!’ in front of my professional peers?” This time, the onus for answering such a query is on Netflix, which rolled out the core cast list for its still-untitled Scooby-Doo live-action series today, adding actors Tanner Hagen, Maxwell Jenkins, and Abby Ryder Fortson to Ghostbusters: Afterlife star Mckenna Grace, who was already attached to the project last month.
Jenkins, for his part, has a prior relationship with Netflix: The actor (who’ll play what the new show insists on calling its “strange, but ever so handsome” version of noted neckerchief enthusiast Fred Jones) previously starred on the streamer’s Lost In Space TV show, as the modern version of spacefarer Will Robinson. Fortson, meanwhile (who’ll be “pragmatic and scientific townie” Velma) starred in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and served as the first of three performers who’ve been cast as Ant-Man’s daughter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hagen has the lightest resumé, having appeared in a handful of TV shows and short films. (This is just a coincidence, but fans of the first season of The Pitt will have seen both Hagen and Fortson before; he’s the kid who keeps spitting up blood in the show’s 11 a.m. episode, while she played recurring abortion-seeker Kristi Wheeler throughout the season.) Hagen will play the new show’s take on Shaggy, an old friend of Grace’s Daphne, with the two of them stumbling upon “a lonely lost Great Dane puppy that may have been a witness to a supernatural murder” while at summer camp. (If only someone could teach this dog to talk—although not actually very well.)
The series is being showrun by Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, both film and TV veterans with a lot of highs and a lot of lows in their filmographies. (Rosenberg adapted High Fidelity to film and co-wrote Kangaroo Jack in the span of three years; Appelbaum co-wrote both Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol and the completely forgotten animated feature Wonder Park. The pair have worked together in TV before, through their Midnight Radio production company, most notably on James Patterson “What if the animals tried to murder us all?” series Zoo.) Produced at Warner Bros. Television, the Scooby series is being developed under the banner of “I can bring back any old thing and turn it into a profitable teen drama” mastermind Greg Berlanti.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.