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"In the fall of 1999, four teenaged sleuths and their Great Dane got lost in the woods in search of a mystery. This is their story."
The text read as a precursor to a Scooby-Doo marathon on Cartoon Network began on Halloween Night in 1999. However, this was no ordinary Scooby-Doo marathon. This was The Scooby-Doo Project. A daring Scooby-Doo parody of The Blair Witch Project that aired in segments in between each episode.
The short film has received critical acclaim for its witty humor and its tongue-in-cheek satirization of both Scooby-Doo and the horror genre as a whole. It earned an Annie Award and several complaints from parents.
This was the first big project from Casper Kelly. At the time, a fresh-faced copywriter for Cartoon Network promos who had only written a couple of episodes of CatDog, but since then, he has made many cult classic hits and recently had a horror comedy feature film with an A-list cast premiere at Sundance.
He made several promos and "bumpers" for Cartoon Network in the early 2000s that have gone on to be nostalgia for an entire generation, his Jabberjaw music video being a personal favorite. In 2004, he slowly began migrating over to Adult Swim. First, as a writer for Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, before creating his own show, Stroker and Hoop.
A self-described Adult Swim "superfan" who got a chance to work there, Kelly wrote for any show that would let him, basically for free. He wrote episodes for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies, and created the TV Movie Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, which was later developed into a full TV show.
Then, in 2014, Too Many Cooks aired at 4 a.m. on Adult Swim as part of their Infomercials series, leaving insomniacs around the country mystified. It was a bizarre but simple concept: a parody of a family sitcom intro that simply keeps going. Over the course of 11 minutes, it shifts into different genres such as a cop drama and a G.I. Joe parody. It culminates in a brilliant deconstruction of our cultural awareness of TV intros. During the development of the surreal comedy horror short film, Kelly found himself wondering why he was spending so much time on a short film instead of a more substantial project.
But his work paid off.
Too Many Cooks became a viral sensation with millions of views on YouTube and multiple articles from the Hollywood press. Too Many Cooks was praised as a towering achievement in surreal comedy. It was nominated for 3 separate awards, winning two of them. This quickly became Casper Kelly's first mainstream hit.
The Casper Kelly brand of surreal comedic horror went full steam ahead from there. Adult Swim's Yule Log, a horror-comedy that masquerades as a simple Yule Log video, became a cult classic. He continued to produce for TV shows such as the animated Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell and Agent Elvis.
Flash forward to the present, his feature film Buddy premiered at Sundance 2026, featuring prominent actors such as Keegan-Michael Key, Topher Grace, Patton Oswalt, and Cristin Milioti.
The movie is, in true Casper Kelly fashion, a horror comedy spoof of '90s children's shows wherein a group of friends gets trapped in a kids' show called "Buddy" starring Buddy, the homicidal unicorn. The movie was nominated for the audience award at Sundance and premieres on August 28, 2026.
It is incredible to see how a writer of memorable Cartoon Network promos can build on his work and end up with a big movie under his belt.
I, for one, can't wait to see what Kelly has in store for us.
