Mckenna Grace to Play ‘Scooby-Doo’s Live-Action Daphne

Scooby-Doo has a new pal — or at least an old one in a new form.

It’s been nearly a year since Netflix first announced a live-action Scooby-Doo TV show. Now, casting has been revealed: Mckenna Grace, known for her roles in Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Frozen Empire, will be playing Daphne.

As a lifelong movie and TV fan, I’ve seen a lot of things come and go, but Scooby-Doo is one of those franchises that just sticks around! It all started back in 1969 when Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created it for Hanna-Barbera. Basically, it’s been a series of animated shows ever since, following Scooby and his friends as they travel around solving mysteries. It’s a classic for a reason!

Before this new adaptation, Scooby-Doo had only been featured in two live-action films: Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004). Both movies were written by James Gunn, who later became known for his work with Marvel and DC Comics. Sarah Michelle Gellar, famous for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played Daphne in those films.

The latest Scooby-Doo series, an animated show called Velma, aimed at a more mature audience and focused on the character of Velma Dinkley. Constance Wu provided the voice for Daphne in that series. Before that, the 2020 film Scoob! attempted to add a superhero element to the franchise, including characters from Hanna-Barbera like Blue Falcon. Amanda Seyfried voiced Daphne in Scoob!, while McKenna Grace voiced a younger version of the character.

Netflix originally announced this new Scooby series in March 2025, and here’s how they described it at the time.

This is a fresh take on the classic mystery-solving team and their amazing dog. As Shaggy and Daphne enjoy their last summer at camp, they stumble into a spooky mystery involving a lost Great Dane puppy who might have seen a supernatural crime. They team up with Velma, a logical and scientific local, and Freddy, a mysterious but charming new student, to solve the case. But as they investigate, they’re pulled into a terrifying nightmare that could reveal hidden secrets from everyone’s past.

The live-action Scooby-Doo is expected to run for eight episodes on Netflix.

Movies That Were Abandoned During Production and Never Finished

All-Star Weekend

Jamie Foxx’s first time directing was a comedy about two truck drivers (played by Foxx and Jeremy Piven) who unexpectedly win tickets to the NBA All-Star Game. The film follows their chaotic road trip to get there. Though it was filmed in late 2016, it was never released, and Foxx was frequently asked about it in interviews. Last year, he explained that the movie was canceled due to issues with a sensitive portrayal: Robert Downey Jr. played a Mexican character, similar to his role in Tropic Thunder. Foxx implied this was the primary reason the film will never see the light of day.

Arrive Alive

You know, after making Scrooged, the team behind it – Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue – wrote a script for a film called Arrive Alive. It was a classic noir setup: a detective looking into a boxer’s murder, and of course, he falls for a captivating dancer. They even got Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack to star, and Jeremiah S. Chechik, who’d just done National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, was going to direct. But things fell apart fast. After just a week of filming, the producers weren’t happy with what they were seeing, Dafoe left the project, and ultimately, the whole thing was scrapped. The footage just… disappeared. It’s a shame, because it sounded really interesting, but it’s never been seen since.

Batgirl

When Warner Bros. first launched HBO Max, they intended to create a number of live-action DC movies specifically for the streaming service. However, after Discovery acquired Warner Bros., their plans for the service (later renamed Max) changed dramatically. This led to the cancellation of several projects, most notably Batgirl. The film, which starred Leslie Grace as Batgirl, would have featured J.K. Simmons returning as Commissioner Gordon and Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman after appearing in The Flash. Despite being fully filmed and edited into a preliminary cut, Warner Bros. Discovery decided to scrap the project altogether, accepting a loss of around $90 million. The complex financial reasoning behind such decisions in Hollywood remains a puzzle.

Black Water Transit

This crime thriller, filmed in New Orleans in 2009 and starring Laurence Fishburne and Karl Urban, has never been released. It became entangled in complex financial and legal problems surrounding producer David Bergstein – a situation so convoluted it’s difficult to understand, even when looking at the film’s Wikipedia page. Ultimately, Bergstein was convicted of fraud and sent to prison.

Bogart Slept Here

Robert De Niro is considered one of the best actors of the 20th century, but even he doesn’t always click with a role. After making Taxi Driver, he began working with director Mike Nichols on a movie called Bogart Slept Here, based on a script by Neil Simon. However, after a few days of filming, Simon and Nichols realized De Niro’s serious acting style didn’t quite match Simon’s humorous writing. Both Nichols and De Niro left the project. Richard Dreyfuss replaced De Niro, and Simon completely rewrote the script, ultimately creating The Goodbye Girl. This new film was a huge success, and Dreyfuss even won an Oscar for his performance.

Broadway Brawler

Throughout his career, Bruce Willis had a few movies that were started but never finished. One example is a 1997 Disney film called Broadway Brawler, where he was going to play a retired hockey player who finds love. Production halted after about three weeks because Willis wasn’t satisfied with how things were going. Despite efforts to save the project by changing the crew, Broadway Brawler was ultimately abandoned. Disney was frustrated by the loss of money and considered suing Willis. To make things right, Willis agreed to star in three future Disney films – Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, and The Kid – for lower pay. Ironically, all three of those movies became huge successes for both Disney and Willis, proving that you can’t always predict how things will end up.

The Day the Clown Cried

One of the most famous unreleased films is a 1972 project by Jerry Lewis, who wrote, directed, and starred in it. He played Helmut Doork, a German clown who offered counseling to children held in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The production faced numerous issues, mainly financial. It wasn’t released because the producers never secured the rights to the original story, and the author strongly disliked the early cut, refusing to sign off on it, effectively ending the film. Though never finished, enough footage existed to create a rough cut, which only a few people have seen. Reactions were mixed, with some calling it a shockingly misguided comedy, while others offered more positive feedback. This rough cut was archived at the Library of Congress with the stipulation that it wouldn’t be shown publicly until 2024.

The Deep

Although Citizen Kane was a huge critical success, Orson Welles often faced difficulties securing funding for his later films. He frequently started projects, only to be halted by lack of money and forced to move on. This happened with The Deep, a thriller he worked on in Europe in the mid-1960s with Laurence Harvey and Jeanne Moreau. After funding fell through, Welles tried to revive the project, but Harvey’s death in 1973 ultimately ended its chances. The film was based on the novel Dead Calm, which was later adapted into a successful movie by Phillip Noyce.

The Double

Dostoyevsky’s story, The Double, eventually made it to the screen in a 2013 film with Jesse Eisenberg. However, almost 20 years earlier, John Travolta was planning his own movie adaptation, directed by Roman Polanski. The project was well underway, with rehearsals completed and filming about to start, when Travolta and Polanski reportedly had a significant disagreement about the film’s creative vision. Shortly after, the movie was cancelled. Luckily, the story did get a film adaptation after all, with the Eisenberg movie released years later.

A Glimpse of Tiger

Elliott Gould purchased the rights to Herman Raucher’s 1971 novel, A Glimpse of Tiger, intending to star in the movie adaptation. Filming began with director Anthony Harvey, but Gould soon fired him, fueled by reports of unpredictable behavior on set. Sources claim Gould’s actions deeply disturbed a co-star, leading to security being hired for her protection, and ultimately led to him being deemed unfit to work for two years. He later successfully returned to filmmaking with Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.

Gore

When accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Kevin Spacey, Ridley Scott famously replaced him in the film All the Money in the World just weeks before it was released. Christopher Plummer stepped in and reshot all of Spacey’s scenes, even earning an Oscar nomination for his work. Less well-known is that Spacey had also filmed a biopic about Gore Vidal for Netflix around the same time. Because Spacey was the sole lead in that film, replacing him would have meant completely reshooting the entire project. Netflix decided against that, and as a result, the film remains unfinished and is unlikely to ever be released.

It’s All True

Like many of Orson Welles’ projects, It’s All True was never fully realized. While working on The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles was sent to Latin America as a cultural ambassador and began filming a movie celebrating the region’s culture. He shot several short films intended to be combined into a feature. However, a change in studio leadership at RKO led to the new management losing interest in Welles’ work. They re-edited Ambersons without his approval and ultimately cancelled It’s All True, refusing to fund its completion. Years later, some of the unused footage was used to create a documentary about the troubled production, also titled It’s All True, but this documentary doesn’t represent Welles’ original, finished film.

Revenge of the Nerds (Remake)

At the 2006 Comic-Con, Fox heavily promoted a planned remake of the classic 1980s comedy Revenge of the Nerds, which followed a group of underdogs standing up to bullies. The new version was set to star Adam Brody and Kristin Cavallari, with Fanboys director Kyle Newman at the helm. Filming started on schedule, but the project was quickly shut down when Emory University, the planned filming location, withdrew its permission after reading the script. Combined with the studio’s dissatisfaction with the initial footage, the Revenge of the Nerds remake never came to fruition.

Scoob! Holiday Haunt

Originally intended as a streaming exclusive on HBO Max, this follow-up to the 2020 animated film Scoob! met the same fate as Batgirl. Despite being almost finished, Warner Bros. Discovery decided to cancel the project entirely instead of releasing it. As a result, Holiday Haunt was scrapped, and the completed film will never be seen by the public.

Superman Lives

As a big Superman fan, it’s still wild to me that Tim Burton and Nicolas Cage were once attached to a Superman movie! Warner Bros. really went for it, sinking around $30 million into pre-production for Superman Lives before sadly canceling it. We even got to see some of Nic Cage’s costume tests in the documentary The Death of Superman Lives – What Happened? Apparently, the biggest problem was the cost – finishing the film would have needed another $200 million! It was a little cool to see a CGI version of Cage as Superman briefly pop up in The Flash, though. It’s a shame Tim Burton felt his ideas were used without his approval – he said he was in a ‘quiet revolt’ over it.

10 Things I Hate About Life

I kept hearing about this movie, 10 Things I Hate About Life, and honestly, I thought it was going to be a follow-up to 10 Things I Hate About You since it was directed by the same guy, Gil Junger. But apparently, that was the only connection! Sadly, it was never actually finished. They stopped filming after just two months, and there are different stories about why. Some people said it was issues with the production company, while others claimed Evan Rachel Wood’s pregnancy was the reason. It even led to a legal fight between her and the producers. Honestly, after hearing all this, maybe there are actually eleven things to hate about life now!

Trick Or Treat

Michael Apted, known for directing the Up series, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and The World Is Not Enough, began filming a movie about a lesbian couple trying to have a baby but never completed it. Around 40 minutes of footage was reportedly filmed before production stopped, supposedly due to a conflict between star Bianca Jagger and the producers regarding how much nudity and sexual content would be included in the film.

Wake

Bruce Willis had started work on another film, an action movie where he would have played a sociopath returning home for his brother’s funeral – which explains the title, Wake. Unfortunately, like another of his projects, this one was halted due to funding problems. Production began but quickly stopped, and after Willis and director John Pogue left, the film was ultimately cancelled.

Who Killed Bambi?

The Sex Pistols, aiming to create a punk rock film in the style of A Hard Day’s Night, approached director Russ Meyer, as they admired his film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Meyer then enlisted Roger Ebert, his co-writer from Dolls, to help with the project. They developed a screenplay titled Who Killed Bambi?, inspired by an opening scene featuring a rock star—similar to Mick Jagger—killing a deer with a bow and arrow. Meyer filmed this scene, but the production stalled due to funding problems—either the studio withdrew support or the band’s manager ran out of money, depending on the account. Ultimately, the film was abandoned, and the mystery of who killed Bambi remains unsolved.

Yellow Submarine (Remake)

Director Robert Zemeckis once planned to remake the Beatles’ animated film, Yellow Submarine, using motion capture technology. However, after a few of his motion-capture projects, like A Christmas Carol and Mars Needs Moms, weren’t successful, Disney closed his animation studio, and the remake was cancelled. While his version of Yellow Submarine wasn’t completed, early concept art and storyboards are available online.

2026-02-18 00:30