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Mystery Inc. Has Plans To Return In Style in 2026! From Anime-Style Ghosts To A Darker Live-Action Origin Story.

From anime-inspired yokai to a darker live-action origin story, Mystery Inc. and the gang are gearing up for thrilling new adventures that we hope will air in 2026.

Mystery Inc. Complete Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang may be taking a brief break before their next adventure. The last series, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, wrapped in 2021, and since Velma exists in its own universe, fans—including me—are asking for a proper weekly series to enjoy. Three movies arrived in the past three years: Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, and Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! The last one stood out, and I’d love to see more from that pairing.

Looking ahead, fans can expect an anime-inspired series set in Japan and a live-action origin story from Netflix. Details remain limited, but here’s what’s known.

Go-Go Mystery Machine – Scooby Hits Japan

Cartoon Network and Max have green-lit Go-Go Mystery Machine, an anime-styled Scooby-Doo adventure that sends Shaggy and Scooby across the Pacific. They’ll join a new team featuring Etsuko and Toshiro along with another mascot. Together, they’ll face Japanese monsters and yokai, blending folklore with the franchise’s familiar “unmask the villain” formula.

If you haven’t caught the GeGeGe no Kitaro reference, it’s because you haven’t explored this seminal work, which celebrates yokai culture at its fullest. It nods to Kitaro, a series that helped popularize yokai in Japanese media, signalling that this Scooby-Doo adventure draws on rich folklore rather than simply borrowing visual style.

The art direction leans heavily into Japanese influences, and fans online already call it “the Scooby-Doo anime we always wanted.” No premiere date is set, but industry watchers suggest late 2025, depending on production schedules.

Go-Go Mystery Machine

Netflix Live-Action Origins – A Darker Mystery Inc. (most likely in 2026)

Netflix has ordered an eight-episode live-action reimagining of Scooby-Doo’s origins. The story unfolds during the gang’s last summer at Camp Ruby-Spears, where Shaggy and Daphne discover a supernatural murder. This setup subtly echoes The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, where the focus was on these two characters—a connection that gives fans an Easter-egg-style nod. They’ll either adopt or meet Scoob, and some sources indicate he will appear as a puppy. He’ll be key to a greater mystery that brings Velma and newcomer Freddy into the investigation.

With no casting news and only a few months left in 2025, filming this year seems unlikely. Expect a release in late 2026 or 2027. Showrunners Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg excel at high-concept reboots, while executive producer Greg Berlanti (Riverdale) brings experience with teen drama and moody reinterpretations. With this team, viewers can expect a darker, more character-driven take. Rumours suggest a Stranger Things-style vibe, a fitting direction now that series has wrapped.

A New Era

From Japanese ghosts to Netflix’s summer-camp mystery, Scooby-Doo continues to show his versatility. A 2026 debut looks more realistic than anything this year. Warner Bros. rarely promotes smaller launches, so a surprise direct-to-video release around Halloween isn’t impossible. Regardless, what’s in progress suggests a strong future for this classic hound.

Sources:

Screen Rant – Scooby-Doo anime project
Reddit r/Scoobydoo – Go-Go Mystery Machine discussion
EW – Netflix live-action Scooby-Doo series
Vulture – They’re Riverdale-ing Scooby-Doo
The Sun – Netflix reboot announcement

[Fantasia Film Festival] Transcending Dimensions (次元を超える) To Boldly Go Where No Soul Has Gone Before

Presented here is not a very traditional story about a hitman hired to take out a cult leader and rescue a brother. There’s added layers in Transcending Dimensions which suggest it’s best not to challenge some of these mystics, and here’s why:

Transcending Dimensions poster — **This movie played at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival on July 24th, and has an encore performance July 28th. Get your ticket here.**

Transcending Dimensions is less a conventional narrative and more of an immersive sensory experience. While this review delves into its themes and stylistic choices, readers who prefer to encounter the film with absolutely no prior knowledge of its unconventional journey may wish to proceed with caution regarding potential thematic insights.

As an instalment in the series of films by writer/director Toshiaki Toyoda, this latest in his Wolf Mountain series delves further into thematic tones about the perils of human ignorance. Each film concerns the repetition of historical mistakes. This movie is not always straightforward, and some viewers might find it challenging to follow. Shinno (Ryûhei Matsuda), a professional hitman, is the focus here, and everything he will soon experience may well reshape his world view!. Here, his sister, Nonoka (played with quiet charm by Haruka Imô), recruits him to find her brother, Rosuke (Yôsuke Kubozuka). He is apparently brainwashed, and she hopes to rescue him from the cult he is now part of.

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In The Damned, Surviving Winter is Never Kind

Sometimes, being in the right mood helps make The Damned all the more haunting, and with regular cold nights being the norm for this reviewer, it’s certainly very chilling!

Available on Amazon Prime

The best way to experience Thordur Palsson’s The Damned is to turn off the heat! Whether at the theatre, where it continues to play, or at home, this wonderfully eerie film delivers solid chills when the viewing environment is perfect! That way, viewers can feel the cold as it settles. At the time, I had the temperature unintentionally dialed low.

In this remote 19th century village, Eva (Odessa Young) is now in charge and works hard to keep the fishermen from deserting. She was a wife to a fisherman who unfortunately perished in a shipwreck during their last fishing journey. While I’m not entirely sure how many people live in this hamlet, I suspect that the initial bunch of twenty something dwindled down to eight by the time this movie starts, and pretty soon, even those people are dying because there’s no food left.

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Guerrilla UFOlogists Better Look Out! In The Next Aliens Uncovered Exists The Land of Legends….

If you have seen none of Clive Christopher’s other Aliens Uncovered documentaries, then there’s really no order in what to watch first. He’ll continue to look at cases not usually explored on Discovery/Travel Channel.

Aliens Uncovered The Land of Legends Poster Available on YouTube and Google Play
Spoiler Alert

Clive Christopher is a Guerrilla style filmmaker looking for a connection between what the indigenous people of Arizona are saying about visitors from the skies, and the information presented in Aliens Uncovered: The Land of Legends is rather fascinating. It is about time we get a look at this world, and I suspect watching this together with UFOs over Arizona and Buried Cities & Lost Tribes paints a bigger picture than this latest alone.

While this work mentions this tribal connection in the first segment, that’s as far as this documentary will go. Apparently, one of the earliest first contacts occurred at Camp Navajo and it doesn’t concern ancient aliens! Although much of what happened remains top secret, enough whistleblowers provided information to create this latest entry to the series. Artificial intelligence video rendered much of this segment, and though the animation style has an alien feel because I feel the technology for realism isn’t there, I suspect Christopher intentionally wanted to give this segment that otherworldly feel.

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Beware The Soul Eater, A New French Alpine Threat!

Not to be confused with the anime, The Soul Eater is a French thriller set to warn kids not to play alone on a cold, winter’s night.

Available to stream on VOD
Original title: Le mangeur d’âmes

When cold evenings are keeping me home for most nights, I better hope that there’s no creature like The Soul Eater nipping at my toes. This film screened at Fantasia 2024, and although I didn’t get to see it then, I waited for its eventual theatrical run. This French alpine monster is most likely made up and the creators did a good job at making the folklore feel real, but as for who is kidnapping the children in the remote community of Roquenoir, only two constables are at it!

Elisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) heads there because the grisly death of a family–with only the kids surviving–is cause for concern. The local enforcement can’t do anything. And joining her is Franck De Rolan (Paul Hamy), who says he’s also on the case. I suspect he has a personal connection when, during the opening act, he’s seen running down a road and screaming! Continue reading “Beware The Soul Eater, A New French Alpine Threat!”

How Many Hidden Levels of Existance Must There Be in This High Octane Sci-Fi Thriller?

Just how many “levels” exist in the cyberverse depends on who you ask, and who is your maker? Thankfully the theology doesn’t bog this sci fi whodunit down, and you’ll have to wonder too!

Playing nationwide at select theatres in Canada
Please check local listings

Adam Stern, in his debut as a filmmaker, knows just how many Levels of existence there are in this multiverse. Whether that hides in the code or is answered in plain sight, that will depend on how folks will want to interpret the material offered in his movie. He not only penned the screenplay but also directed this rather smart and selective sci-fi thriller about Joe (Peter Mooney) wanting to find out who murdered Ash (Cara Gee), the love of his life, in cold blood. That’s because nothing is truly real. There are faces he recognizes during his investigation, and he doesn’t know why.

In a tale that’s inspired from movies like TRON, Inception, Free Guy and The Matrix (the special effects mostly), what’s presented focuses on an element of spirituality that’s always fascinated me–what if it’s all a simulation? But there’s also another question: who would want to kill this woman? As our hero learns there’s a secret cabal who created a virtual reality that is really indistinguishable from our own, there’s a concern: how can we escape from it? Is what’s imagined in one simulation better than another? The answer is simple: don’t get too emotionally attached.

Continue reading “How Many Hidden Levels of Existance Must There Be in This High Octane Sci-Fi Thriller?”