During a family vacation, the Lawrence brothers joked about starting a detective agency.
A guest at where they were vacationing had misplaced a valuable piece of jewelry while at the beach, Joey Lawrence tells TODAY.com. As the investigation continued, he, along with brothers Matt and Andrew Lawrence, began creating fictional storylines about finding the โlost treasure.โ In one scenario, Matt even got a bad sunburn, before shedding his skin to reveal that he was the villain of the story. The ideas kept coming.
So after years of โfooling around with the idea,โ the trio finally decided to team up with the Berkowitz Brothers, Ben and Max Berkowitz, Sean Von Gorman and Z2 to bring โThe Lawrence Brothers Detective Agency,โ an original graphic novel series, to life.
โThe Lawrence Brothers Detective Agencyโ can best be described as a series about โthree brothers whose knack for getting into trouble is only matched by their talent for solving mysteries,โ Andy tells TODAY.com. โEvery case brings clues, chaos, nostalgia, and the kind of brotherly love that only us Lawrence brothers can deliver.โ
The siblings have a long history of collaborating on screen, starting with their 1995 sitcom โBrotherly Love,โ along with โHorse Sense,โ โJumping Ship,โ โMistletoe Mixupโ and more.
A graphic novel, on the other hand, is something new and creative for the trio.
โWeโve been throwing around this idea for years. We wanted to do sort of a grown up โScooby-Dooโ meets โHardy Boysโ and it just kind of came together,โ Joey says. โWe threw in some โ90s nostalgia because itโs all the craze.โ
Inspired by the Scooby Gang, in the first graphic novel they included nods to the franchise by including a mystery van and other โhidden Mickeysโ that would make millennials nostalgic.
The first installment, out now, is the detective agencyโs origin story.
โWe love the fact that you can really take a lot of chances in this type of format, and thatโs what we always loved about comic books and animated series,โ Matt says.
Because they โknow each other so well,โ Andy says, their decadeslong working relationship just flows. Matt adds that when it comes to getting creative, they all come at it from very different angles.
โThe sum of the three parts is always going to be better than us individually, in my opinion,โ he says.
Calling this graphic novel among their most โuniqueโ projects together, they first hoped to create an animated series.
โAn adult โScooby-Doo,โโ Joey says, adding that they would โedge up the ratingโ for an older audience. โI feel like you could have so much fun with that.โ
They aim to expand the universe with additional cases and, yes, one day create an animated series or perhaps a live-action show.
For now, Matt says, โEvery novel that we put out would be a different case that we would take on. So at the end of this one, not to give too much away, we kind of say: Weโre open for business.โ
