Jinkies! Scooby Doo fans aren’t happy with the new Mindy Kaling Velma adult animated comedy series coming to the HBO Max streaming service!
The new show reimagines Velma as an East Asian, where Kaling self-inserts herself into the role.
Wednesday saw the release of the Velma trailer where fans have reacted and disliked it a current 69k times on the official HBO Max YouTube channel to the trailer only having 15k likes.
The IGN YouTube channel adds another 36k dislikes, so that is over 100k dislikes on YouTube.
Update 10/10: The trailer on HBO Max now has 175k dislikes; on IGN, 68k dislikes.
While YouTube has disabled the dislikes feature, Google Chrome extensions can still show the amount of dislikes, such as the “Return YouTube Dislike” extension.
RELATED: The series is now under fire for apparently making Velma straight.
Here are screenshots:
Mindy Kaling doesn’t care what fans think
Back when the Velma series was first announced, Mindy Kaling told a crowd she doesn’t care what fans think.
“Hopefully, you noticed my Velma is South Asian,” she told the crowd in New York City where a first look was unveiled. “If people freak out about that, I don’t care.”
Kaling also appeared on the Late Night With Seth Meyers last year wher she responded to the online responses.
“When it was announced that I was going to do the voice of Velma, people were very supportive and happy on Twitter. And so I felt great. Then it was announced a month ago that the Velma character would be reimagined as South Asian. And people were not happy. There was a lot of, like, ‘So not Velma!’ Those kind of tweets. ‘Not the classic Velma that I’m always thinking about,’” Kaling said.
Kaling continued, “First of all, I didn’t know that she elicited such strong reactions in either direction. I just couldn’t understand how people couldn’t imagine a really smart, nerdy girl with terrible eyesight who loved to solve mysteries could not be Indian. There are Indian nerds. It shouldn’t be a surprise to people, but people are like, ‘No, no, no.’ But it made me think, ‘OK, we’ve got to be really careful with this character,’ which we will be because we love her.”
In related news, Velma is also confirmed to be gay in the Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! animated movie.
The HBO Max Velma series is described an adult animated comedy series telling the origin story of Velma Dinkley, the unsung and underappreciated brains of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang. An original and humorous spin that unmasks the complex and colorful past of one of America’s most beloved mystery solvers, executive producer Mindy Kaling will voice the titular character. Charlie Grandy, Howard Klein and Sam Register also serve as executive producers. Velma is produced by Warner Bros. Animation.
Velma trailer, poster:
