Warner Brothers' live action version of the Scooby Doo animated series earned an estimated $56.4 million at the box office in its debut weekend, triumphing over bad reviews, negative buzz, and strong competition from The Bourne Identity and Windtalkers.  Scooby Doo had the third best opening of 2002 (behind only Spider-Man and Star Wars Episode II) and the second best June opening ever (behind Austin Powers II's Thursday-aided $57.4).  When a movie opens this big in this era it immediately earns a 'franchise' designation, which means there will be at least two sequels.  Given the fact that Scooby Doo will remain a fixture in animated form on the Cartoon Network, this property appears to be solid for the next few years.

In recent years, Scooby merchandise has enjoyed steady, if unspectacular sales in pop culture stores that carried it.  The movie's success should give merchandise sales a jolt, with the Inkworks cards and DC comics the easiest products to stock quickly.   

Scooby Doo benefited from a host of promotional spots from Dairy Queen that saturated network TV during the week before the film opened. To make sure that Scooby could benefit from the traditionally huge family audience for animated films, the film's publicists neatly finessed the animated series' druggy subtext with a widely reported story about the clever way the marijuana issue is handled in the film (comments like 'Primo' emanating from the Mystery Machine turn out to refer to broiling burgers not smoldering spliffs).

Scooby Doo's strong opening should boost the movie career of star Sarah Michelle Gellar, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Gellar's contract to do the Buffy series has just one more season left and the strong performance of Scooby Do at the box office certainly means that she will have more 'big screen' opportunities and appears to make it more likely that she won't renew her Buffy contract.