Matthew Lillard: "Scooby's Done"

• Aug 13, 2004 04:00 AM ET
• by Angel Cohn

Zoinks! Is the Scooby-Doo franchise done for? Actor Matthew Lillard — who plays grungy hippie Shaggy — thinks this particular dog has had its day. Although the sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, didn't play dead at the box office (domestic gross was more than $80 million) it wasn't a big hit by today's standards. Looks like it's time to let sleeping cartoon dogs lie, and give Sarah Michelle Gellar's Daphne poses a rest.

"I think it is done," the 34-year-old says. "At some point, that franchise will come back, but I don't think it will have any of us in it. It will probably be four or five years from now — that's my prediction. I actually think that the second movie was much better than the first movie; I think that we had a bad release date. "

Does that mean we'll never see Lillard scarf down Scooby Snacks again, even if Warner Bros. opts for a third Scooby movie? "Contractually, I would have to do it," he admits. "I like doing the character. It is a real blast, and it is a challenge."

Bet he'd like to rid his r&#233sum&#233 of the films altogether, with all the young fans who must come up to him imitating Shaggy and quoting his lines. "I have things in my past that I want to burn, but none of them are ever quoted," he laughs. "Nobody's ever said 'You were great!' and quoted a line from Wing Commander."

Not to worry, Matt. With his endless roles in goofball comedies like Without a Paddle (opens Aug. 20), fans will have plenty of witty lines to spew back at him. Although the film's script went through lots of retooling before it even approached wit. "I sat down with [director Steven Brill] and I said that the script was OK, at best," he reveals. "He went off and did a rewrite. I think he took a script that was arguably a five and took it up to an eight. He really kicked it up. And then, between doing the rehearsals and doing improv [during filming], I think we are all really happy with [how] the script [turned out]."