“Scoob! Holiday Haunt” director mocks former Warner Bros. bosses after their exit: “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Michael Kurinsky, the director of the cancelled animated film “Scoob! Holiday Haunt”, did not hide his delight at the news that former Warner Bros. chiefs Mike De Luca and Pamela Abdy are leaving the studio amid the $110 billion merger with Paramount Skydance, as TheWrap reports.

On Friday, Kurinsky posted on Instagram a Hollywood Reporter article about the “tense phone call” De Luca and Abdy had on the eve of their departure, accompanied by his own stinging message: “TENSE PHONE CALL, PAM? You mean like the one I got when you told me SCOOB Holiday Haunt was cancelled? Hurts, doesn’t it?”

The film, a prequel to “Scoob!” (2020) in which a 10-year-old Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, Velma and Scooby celebrate their first Christmas together at a winter resort, was pulled from the schedule in August 2022 — the same day the studio also buried “Batgirl” — allowing Warner Bros. Discovery to take a tax write-down, as TheWrap writes. In a 2022 interview with Variety, Kurinsky said he learned the news by phone: “In the calls we had with people, they explained… we’re taking this tax deduction, we can’t monetise it. That’s how they explained it to me.”

De Luca and Abdy were told by Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison that they would not be part of the merged company — the merger is expected to close on 6 October. They had run Warner Bros. since 2022, a period that also included this year’s Oscar win for “One Battle After Another”, but no film from the studio passed $100 million at the U.S. box office during 2026.

Kurinsky has long campaigned for the film’s release — most recently hoping for a rescue similar to that of “Coyote vs. Acme”, the buried film that found its way into cinemas through Ketchup Entertainment this September. For now, “Scoob! Holiday Haunt” remains locked in the studio’s drawers.