Scooby-Doo! and the Gourmet Ghost will be available in stores on DVD and Digital on 09/11/18 and features the voices of Bobby Flay (Beat Bobby Flay), Giada De Laurentiis (Giada in Italy) and Marcus Samuelsson (Chopped). You will also find three bonus episodes in the release: What’s New, Scooby-Doo?  “Recipe for Disaster”, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo  “Wanted: Cheddar Alive”, and Scooby-Doo! Mystery, Incorporated  “The Devouring”. It is the 31st direct-to-video film in the series and follows Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The movie was directed by Doug Murphy and written by Tim Sheridan.  We got to spend our Sunday morning at San Diego Comic-Con with these two as well as the lovely Grey Griffin, who returns as Daphne.

The gang is off to the Rocky Harbor Culinary Resort, a cooking retreat in New Port Cove, Rhode Island, whose owner happens to be Fred’s uncle, the world renowned chef Bobby Flay!  Mystery Incorporated is quickly roped into great mischief as a red ghost appears who might be related to the unsolved disappearance of Bobby’s ancestor, a great chef as well. As the hauntings ramp up, Giada De Laurentiis joins the gang to help solve the mystery.

Tim Sheridan, the screenwriter, did Comic-Con right. The day before presenting his very first panel at a convention, he was able to escape and relax at the hotel and do a harbor cruise, which assured he would be well rested to tackle the monumental tasks of sitting on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con as the writer of an animated movie and of premiering his first movie at Comic-Con!

“I’ve been coming to Comic-Con as a fan for 20 years and only as a working professional for the last couple years. Today… is my first ever Comic-Con panel… I’ve never had a movie premier at Comic-Con before!”

“I can’t believe that I get the keys to this… well, I should say ‘van’, but the keys to the car… that I can get to do this now after growing up watching Scooby-Doo… I feel like I was living Scooby-Doo as a kid!

Indeed, the movie is set in New England and Tim grew up in New England and is no stranger to ghosts and hauntings. “The thing about that place is that it’s so steeped in history that you are surrounded all the time by ghost stories.” He wanted to do a ghost story but with some real history behind it. He wouldn’t divulge any plot secrets, but did share that “there will be surprises. You think you know where this is going, but it may take a turn…. But the gang, Mystery Inc, they always get their man…”

So how did he end up working on the film?  Scooby-Doo! and the Gourmet Ghost is the first Scooby-Doo movie Tim has worked on. He was at Warner Brothers and had worked on Justice League Action when the idea of teaming up our favorite foodies with celebrity chefs first came up: “The great tradition with Scooby Doo is having fabulous guest stars” and this latest film does not disappoint!  A genius at the studio came up with the idea to put the two biggest celebrity chefs in a movie with the two biggest foodies known to the world – Scooby and Shaggy.

Someone at the studio happily remembered that Tim was a Food Network junkie so they called him in and offered him the project, to which he responded: “Are you kidding me? Let’s do it!”  And Tim loved it: “It was great.  Getting to live in the world of Scooby-Doo for a while is an incredible thing. 

Bobby Flay was already thrilled to be part of the film when Tim was tapped to write the screenplay.  Once the screenplay was written, Tim and Bobby talked to see what he thought of the story and Bobby “could not have been more excited and more supportive and he… had some ideas… and we put it all together… and I think we made a really fun movie!”

Giada De Laurentiis was a no brainer!  If you watch Bobby Flay then you know that Giada De Laurentiis and he are “like peanut butter and jelly. They’re pals. They host a lot of shows together. You always see them hanging around with each other.” It made a lot of sense to use the already existing chemistry that exists between the two instead of trying to recreate it with a different person.

Both Nacho Flay, cat, and Bella De Laurentiis, cat, were not nearly as easily signed for the film as their owners, according to Tim. They had a lot of demands and “it was tough to get them to say yes, but once we did, we knew we had a movie.”

As far as how it was to work with Bobby, Giada, and Marcus: “They were terrific!  These guys are not just world class chefs – they are television stars… They know how to hit their marks… They just blew everybody away.”  I asked him how difficult it was to write characters that not only truly existed in real life, but that were very well known and recognized: “I wrote these characters, these chefs, the way that I see them… the way we all see them… It was a great fun opportunity to figure out their voices. We figured it out together as we went through the process.”

As far as his biggest challenge, Tim says, “Having to come up with complicated and interesting dishes for our heroes to talk about?”  What are the things that Shaggy would want when he meets a famous chef?  “What would he want them to make for him?  What does he never get to eat on the road?” 

Indeed, “trying to come up with those sort of things was complicated, but you know, all I had to do was remembering… think back to all of my many Many hours of food television!  I would just put it on all day… I can’t stop watching it!

We of course had to ask if any of the chefs cooked for the crew, and the answer was sadly no.  Tim does know exactly what he would want Bobby Flay to cook for him – the perfect cheeseburger!  “I am a simple man… When I watch Bobby Flay make a burger, it is done with so much care and such attention to details… I’ve never tasted one of his burgers and all I want to do is eat a Bobby Flay burger.  So, I think that’s all I would ask for… I could ask him to do pretty much… Like Shaggy does… I could ask him to make some very complicated things, but no, it’s gotta be a burger.”

Tim has also written for Justice League Action, Justice League Action Shorts, Lego DC Super Hero Girls, Legend Quest, and Spooksville Freak Files. He is currently working on a couple more Scooby-Doo projects. His excitement for this film and the ones he is working on was contagious; he can’t wait to work more with Daphne, Velma, Fred, Shaggy, and of course, Scooby.

Doug Murphy, the director, has a long history in story boarding having worked on Disney’s Mighty Ducks, Constantine, City of Demons, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs. Mutants, Justice League, and The Penguins of Madagascar amidst dozens of other project and is no stranger to Scooby Doo, being a part of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, and Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare.

“Scooby has pretty much been a dream project.”  Doug enjoyed working on the film greatly. “It’s a mashup of celebrity chefs with mostly Shaggy and Scooby who… eat all the time. It just seemed like a no brainer to finally bring those together…  I thought it was fun to… work with those characters and try to do a somewhat scary ghost where we could and go and have some goofy fun…”  

He loved having the opportunity to work with Bobby and Giada: “It was great… I was really thrilled… When we went to record… all the chefs recorded separately by themselves… Of course, we had our fingers crossed – Hey, maybe they’ll cater! They didn’t.” 

Doug worked extensively as a story-boarder, but felt the move to directing was a natural one: “Storyboarding is trying to make continuity… like a movie and the thing about being a storyboard artist is that you have your own … just your own small section that you’re worry about… As a director, you come in and you have three storyboard artists… and you try and make that all work cohesively and you try and solve the problems that come up.” He continues, “For me, storyboarding and directing go hand in hand, but there are still a lot of decisions that have to be made…”

I asked how you direct animation where you don’t have actual physical people to move and direct: “In animation, it’s different because it’s not with live action actors and you’re not there with a camera and say ‘Go stand over there.’  But in a way, you still control… Storyboard is a square that we have. It’s basically the frame of the picture, and we go from shot to shot and we decide in drawings what that shot is.” This method requires working out the movements, the continuity, and the timing, just like it would if this were a live action film.  As far as the familiarities between live action directing and animation directing, “You’re still using images to advance the story.” And as far as the differences?  “We draw it.”

Grey Griffin has been the voice of Daphne since 2001 and has been releasing albums since 2000. She has worked in animation since her time on Rugrats in 1996 and made her live action TV debut on that ‘70s Show in 1997. She has voiced characters in almost 200 film, episodes, and video games over her career so far.

Grey is absolutely delightful. She instantly jumps in to multiple voices first sounding like an old woman and running the gamut till she is a young girl. She is warm and friendly and truly does the best voices.  Having been Daphne since 2001, she truly owns the role and has seen the character progress from being mainly an arm piece for Fred to being a much stronger more assertive woman: “Over the years I have been playing Daphne, I think that she has gotten more and more progressively sarcastic because… just a little bit of Grey has seeped in in there…  She started a little more innocent than I’ve played her…. It’s twenty years of me putting myself into it…”

Indeed, Daphne has changed with the times…  The writers have been doing a great updating the character to match the times, especially in this metoo era. Grey says, “I’ve felt like Daphne’s become way more than just the fashionable arm piece, you know?  She is really standing up to Freddie and… making fun of him a lot.” The writers have been very receptive to Grey’s input as far as Daphne is concerned, but Grey is also aware that sometimes, she slips as well and the writers have her covered there too.  It’s a team effort. 

She continues, “So Daphne’s coming into her own…” which lead to Grey sharing with us that she was the voice of the red head in the Pirates of Caribbean ride at Disneyland who was just liberated and turned into a free woman! She is the voice of Red!  And then she slipped into the voice and bam! We were transported there! How rad is that?  Her son, the social justice warrior, is thrilled; he was horrified when he realized these women were being sold off and it was a representation of human trafficking, so having his own mom be the new Red is pretty special. When he first realized what was happening, Grey and he had a discussion about why it was there and why it hadn’t changed and he responded that “if we can change it to put Johnny Depp on the ride, then we can get rid of the trafficking.”  I would love to meet this kid.

She was very excited about the film – let’s face it, Scooby and Shaggy and celebrity chefs?  Goes hand in hand!  She was able to participate in a Scooby-Doo Cupcake Wars episode and loved it.  It’s surprising that this is the first time Mystery Inc. has been involved with chefs!  And it’s about time. She is also an avid Food Network viewer and loves celebrity chefs, so she was bummed she did not get to meet any of the chefs and even more so, that she wasn’t able to taste any of their incredible recipe.  She was hoping to finally meet them at the premier, but they sadly had change of plans at the last minute. 

We spent the rest of the interview discussing some of our favorite food. Grey is of Mexican origin, so we drooled over traditional dishes like mole.  When asked what she would want Bobby or Giada to cook for her, she said “Ohhhh, my goodness! Well, Giada… I love… an amazing marinara!  I love burrata… like a burrata salad… with some nectarines or something seasonal…  She is so good with these…“   And for Bobby?  Traditional Tex-Mex all the way even though it’s not his main cooking style. She shared her favorite casserole recipe:  Tear up and fry up corn tortillas, you lay them on the bottom and cover them in cheese, add eggs, more tortillas, more cheese, and some verde sauce.  We were starving by that point.  We shared amazing Trader Joe’s cheeses – she loves Unexpected Cheddar – “I always take a bite and go, ‘Uhm, that was unexpected!” and for me, Italian Truffle Cheese all the way.