Filmmaker: Warner Bros. Hid Velma's True Sexuality

"I tried!" That's how filmmaker James Gunn opens a tweet about his effort to make the character of Velma "explicitly gay" in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie, the Sunday Times reports. Gunn says the studio, Warner Bros., "just kept watering it down & watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) & finally having a boyfriend (the sequel)." CNN notes that Gunn wrote both the 2002 flick and its 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which featured Linda Cardellini as Velma. By the second movie, Velma had a boyfriend played by Seth Green, so any hope of Velma being gay was locked firmly away.

BuzzFeed reports that Tony Cervone, supervising producer for Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated—the animated show that ran from 2010 to 2013—added a similar post of his own: Velma on the show "is not bi. She's gay," he wrote. "We always planned on Velma acting a little off and out of character while she was dating Shaggy, because that relationship was wrong for her and she had unspoken difficulty with the why." Cervone added that "I don't think Marcie and Velma had to act on their feelings during the main timeline, but post reset, they are a couple. You can not like it, but this was our intention." Still doubting it? This compilation of Scooby-Doo moments captures what some consider the real Velma. (More LGBTQ stories.)