HBO Max’s shot at a female-led, edgy adult animated comedy to join Harley Quinn has faced a rough launch on the streaming seas. Velma, the new reimagining of cartoon classic Scooby-Doo, premiered January 12 to negative-leaning mixed reviews from critics and frothing antipathy from viewers, plummeting the show’s ranking to a 6% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes (42% critics rating) and 1.3 stars on IMDb, making it the worst-rated animated series ever on the database.
But, perhaps driven by the same human impulse that leads us to rubberneck at car accidents and enjoy moldy cheese, it seems the negative attention has given a big boost to the show’s streaming numbers. January 17, it was revealed that Velma enjoyed “37.3 times the average series demand” (a 127% week on week increase), according to Parrot Analytics, making it the fourth most in-demand series in the U.S. for the frame.
Now, the maligned animated series beat out HBO’s budget-busting video game adaptation The Last of Us (rated 36.3x average series demand) to rank second in the country behind Netflix’s breakout Addams Family hit Wednesday (41.2x avg. demand). The demand figures include streaming, downloads and social media engagement.
Velma recasts the Mystery Inc. gang with more diversity, with Mindy Kaling voicing a South Asian version of the team’s brainiest member, Velma Dinkley. The 10-episode series from Warner Bros. Animation, which is also executive produced by Kaling, follows the titular character as she tries to solve the disappearance of her mother as well as a string of murders of local teenage girls.
The show recasts the all-white Scooby crew as a more diverse bunch of teens: Sam Richardson (Veep) voices a biracial Norville Rogers (elsewhere known as Shaggy) and Golden Globe-nominated Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) plays popular girl Daphne Blake as an East Asian American teen adopted by two mothers. Fred Jones, Velma’s white rich kid crush, is voiced by Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).Velma is also notably the first Scooby-Doo spinoff not to feature the famous Great Dane.
Charlie Grandy (The Office, The Mindy Project) is the showrunner/executive producer alongside Kaling, Howard Klein and Sam Register.
The first six episodes of Velma are now available to stream on HBO Max; new episodes will arrive in twos on February 2 and February 9.
[Source: NextShark]
