Trivia / Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $39 million. Final box office gross: $14.8 million. Its self-referential tone alienated family audiences, and, as mentioned below, the film's flopping led to Scooby-Doo (which began as a college-oriented semi-parody along the lines of Josie) toning down its adult humor so it wouldn't make the same mistake.
• California Doubling: Most of the film was shot in Vancouver, doubling for New York and various other locations.
• Creator Killer: Pulled a triple on directors/writers Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan and executive producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. Elfont and Kaplan never directed another movie and would not write another film until 2004, while Edmonds has never produced another film.
• Disowned Adaptation: Archie Comics were less than thrilled about the amount of adult humor in the film. In fact, they even made a letter on their website from "Alan M." complaining about the film. Universal subsequently released the film in two versions: the original film and a PG-rated family-friendly cut, which basically toned down all innuendos, including the "pussy" double entendres.
• Production Posse: Most of Du Jour previously appeared in another Elfont/Kaplan movie, Can't Hardly Wait.
  • Going forwards, Robot Chicken, co-created by Seth Green, also featured Breckin Meyer and Donald Faison on a regular basis, as well as Rachael Leigh Cook (notably parodying her infamous "This is your brain on drugs" PSA in the very first episode).
• Star-Derailing Role: Plenty of people suffered from the failure of this film (as also covered underneath Creator Killer), but as far as the actors go, in particular both Rachael Leigh Cook and Tara Reid's once-promising careers took nosedives from which they never fully recovered. Rosario Dawson managed to avoid this due to appearances in hits/cult classics such as Sin City and RENT.
• Stillborn Franchise: The film was meant to be the first of several adult-oriented, semi-parody Hanna-Barbera movie adaptations^note It was the last H-B feature to be overseen by their previous distributors, Universal. All projects since have been produced through Warner Bros., the studio's current owners. which attempted to recreate the novelty appeal of the then-recent [adult swim] shows like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021 and, to a lesser extent, The Brak Show for a wider audience. Its failure resulted in the Scooby-Doo (2002) movie having much of its adult humor toned down.
• Vindicated by Cable: The movie bombed at the box office, but found a following thanks to DVD sales and network airings.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Aaliyah was originally offered the role of Valerie, but turned it down. She died four months after the film was released. In a Bahamas plane crash. Beyoncé and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes also read for the role.
  • Maggie Gyllenhaal and Zooey Deschanel, meanwhile, read for Josie.
  • One of the parody Product Placement ads they wanted was "Everybody in Leopard", parodying the Gap ads of the era that had "Everybody in Denim" or something similar. But Gap read the script and didn't want to be part of it.
  • When the movie was first pitched, Elfont and Kaplan briefly spitballed adapting the infamous Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, but ultimately opted against it.
  • A few years back, Elfont, Kaplan, Seth Green, and Breckin Meyer teamed up to pitch a sequel to Netflix following the lives of a renamed DuJour reuniting. It never happened, though DuJour did reappear in, aptly enough, a Robot Chicken special based around Archie characters in 2021 (with Green, Meyer, and Donald Faison reprising their roles, and Rachael Leigh Cook reprising the role of Josie too).

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