11 Unmade Movie Adapatations That Were Just Weird

As adaptations go, the live-action Scooby-Doo movie written by James Gunn (yes, that James Gunn) is a bit of an odd one. It's self-aware to the point of parody, and includes a lot of jokes aimed more at an adult audience. Which is because James Gunn's original draft was an outright parody aimed at a more mature audience, and made no bones about those subtle adult gags in the final cut.

Shaggy and Scooby would have explicitly been stoners rather than vague allusions like "Mary Jane" being Shaggy's favourite name, and Daphne and Velma would have been in a relationship as Gunn had always believed that Velma was gay. This element survived into the more family-friendly drafts of the scripts, with a moment shot for the body-swapping scene where Daphne and Velma kiss to make sure that their souls return to the right bodies.

Gunn also confirmed, in a Facebook post reflecting on the movie after ffiteen years, that an early cut received an R-rating from the MPAA thanks to a misunderstood joke thought to be about oral sex, and digital reductions having to be made to certain actresses' cleavage.

Although more adult adaptations seem to be working for Archie Comics on Netflix, it's definitely something that wasn't a great fit for a children's cartoon about a talking dog who solves mysteries. Gunn's contract required him to write a sequel, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which was a straighter adaptation of the series without the subversive and adult humour. Clearly, Guardians Of The Galaxy was a better fit for him.