Gellar and Prinze May Lead Scooby Gang

November 6, 2000 -- On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays the leader of the ragtag ghoul-and-vamp-hunting team known as the "Scooby gang"; now she may join up with the real thing. Or, at least as real as playing a cartoon character can ever get.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gellar and real-life beau Freddie Prinze Jr. are ready and willing to play groovy junior detectives Daphne and Fred in the long-in-development live-action version of '70s TV show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?

Gellar and Prinze previously co-starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Coincidentally, another star of that film, Jennifer Love Hewitt, was previously mentioned for the role of beautiful-but-not-too-helpful Daphne.

So, who's on for the roles of snack-craving Shaggy and smarty-pants Velma — and what are they going to do about Scooby, anyway? (Animation? Animatronics? An actor in a dog suit?)

If casting directors want to transplant the Buffy cast wholesale into the pic, they wouldn't have to stretch too far. Alyson Hannigan's Willow is a clothing-challenged brainy girl like Velma (complete with Sapphic leanings), departed slacker-werewolf Oz (Seth Green) had his own mystery van but is a tad too short to play gangly Shaggy, and, in keeping with his current low-man-on-the-totem-pole status, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) might have to wear the dog suit, if it came to that.

Mike Myers was long attached to the project, but, at 37, the swinging spy portrayer is a bit longer in the tooth than Gellar and Prinze. At 23 and 24, respectively, they can still reasonably portray those "meddling kids" we know and love.

Of course, Gellar would have to go red to play Daphne, while Prinze would have to don a fluffy blond wig to stay true to the TV Fred.

Prinze just had a near-miss brush with another cartoony role: Spider-Man, which went instead to serious actor guy Tobey Maguire.