Once upon a time, the live-action “Scooby Doo” movie was rated R

In most of our minds, there’s no world in which Scooby Doo could ever be anything but a children’s show. It just doesn’t make any sense, but before Scooby-Doo: The Movie was given it’s clean PG rating, it was actually rated R. James Gunn, the live action film’s screenplay writer, may have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

In a heartfelt Facebook post commemorating the film’s 15th anniversary, Gunn explains how the ratings came about. Back in 2002, Gunn was presented with the idea of filming a live-action Scooby Doo movie. He was excited about the prospect of using CGI — a technology that was cutting-edge in 2002, but totally normal now. Gunn’s vision was for an edgier movie geared towards older kids and adults (so not Scooby Doo’s traditional demographics).

The very first cut of the film was rated R by the MPAA, but was edited to become PG.  They even CGI’d out the female stars’ cleavage to make it a bit more family friendly.

Despite the fact that part of Gunn’s vision ended up on the cutting room floor, he was pretty pleased about the whole experience.

"I had a lot of fun making this movie, regardless of all that," he said. "And I was also able to eat, buy a car, and a house because of it."

Sounds like success to us! Gunn should be very proud, though his film received unfavorable ratings (boo, haters), it was so culturally important that the Oxford English Dictionary officially added the word “Scooby Snack” last year. All we wanna know is what the heck made this kid’s movie R in the first place? It couldn’t have only been because of some cleavage.