Scooby-Doo: The Movie (1999 film)

 Scooby-Doo: The Movie  is an 1999 American animated horror supernatural film based on the Scooby-Doo franchise created by Hanna-Barbera Productions. It was directed by Joseph Barbera, co-founder of Hanna-Barbera, and written by Dennis Marks and William Hanna and stars the voices of Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Mary Kay Bergman (in one of her final film roles), Don Messick, B.J. Ward, and Eric Idle and follows the Mystery Inc. gang solving a mystery of a missing person last seen in an haunted house. While trying to find them, they get sent to a fourth dimension featuring evil clones of theirselves.

Plans for a Scooby-Doo movie began in 1971 due to the high ratings and popularity of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! but two months later, plans of the film was scrapped due to budget cuts and unavailabilities to find a proper script. More plans for a movie were resurrected in 1994 after creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears pitched the idea of a Scooby-Doo movie to Hanna-Barbera Productions. A version of the film’s script had the Mystery Inc, reuniting with The Addams Family, but was scrapped then. Production of the film began in 1996.

Scooby-Doo: The Movie theatrically released in the United States on September 24, 1999 and received mixed reviews from critics and audiences upon release. Critics praised its performances and upgraded animation, but the plot and dark tone were criticized. In retrospective, the film has now received positive reviews from critics, audiences, and fans. However, it was a box-office bomb, only grossing $22 million.

A sequel titled Scooby-Doo 2, was originally going to release on May 14, 2003, but due to creatuve differences with Barbera and most of the crew-members and the box-office bomb, the sequel was eventually cancelled. A live-action reboot specifically titled Scooby-Doo was released in 2002 and a sequel Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed in 2004, both to generally negative reviews. Due to Monsters Unleashed’s box-office bomb, the Scooby-Doo franchise has been going to direct-to-video films since the 2000s, but another animated theatrical film, Scoob!, was released in 2020.

Synopsis
The Mystery Inc. gang Shaggy Rogers, Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, and Velma Dinkley, as well as the Great Dane Scooby-Doo, are called on a mission by officer Jean Pierre to search for a person that has been missing for three weeks. The Mystery Inc. accept this quest but cannot find where he was last seen, even considering they are not detectives. Things get more worse when the gang are sent to an fourth dimension featuring evil versions of theirselves also featuring the kidnapped man.