"The Goon" Film Is Still On Track, Promises "Deadpool" Director

CBR

By Meagan Damore

Published Apr 8, 2016

According to Tim Miller, studios have shown a burgeoning interest in his animated film adaptation of "The Goon" since the success of "Deadpool."

Back in 2012, directors Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler launched a Kickstarter in an effort to adapt Eric Powell's comic series "The Goon" into a PG-13 animated film. Since then, David Fincher has signed on to produce the project, but there have been few updates otherwise. In a recent interview with Collider, Miller offered some news about the film and explained how "Deadpool's" success has caused studios to show a renewed interest in the project.

"I know it annoys the Kickstarter fans so much and I'm sorry because everybody gives us their hard-earned money and they're so generous about it and they go, 'What the fuck is going on? Why is nothing happening?'" Miller said. "We took that Kickstarter money and spent it all on a full 85-minute animatic of the film. We showed it to [David] Fincher, we've been working on it diligently, we got a bunch of notes, and we've been working on the notes. It's just it took all of the Kickstarter money to do the 85-minutes of that and fulfill all the other stuff, so we go back to this additional work, [which] goes into the cracks between actual paying projects."

"If 'Deadpool' shined any light in the direction of the studio, we wanna use some of that light to shine it on 'Goon,'" he added. "So we've been doing a lot of work lately, we did some voiceover last week."

As to the throughline between "Deadpool" and this renewed interest in "The Goon," he explained, "I do think that there is a corollary. 'Deadpool' proves it, in a big way, that there is a market for this stuff out there... Goon is very much an action -- it's got a lot of heart, it's got a lot of comedy, it's got a lot of similarities to what I think was successful in 'Deadpool,' and so I think it's not a stretch to compare those two things and say the world is a little more ready than they used to be for this kind of material. In the past, there's reasons why 'The Goon' wasn't made, it's because people were afraid of edgy animation. Now I think that 'Deadpool' has proved that that audience is out there in a bigger way than some people thought."

"We haven't taken it back out yet, but I can honestly say, without saying who, there has been a number of calls now -- for years it didn't happen -- saying, 'Hey, we hear you have this "Goon" project. When can we see it? What can we see?' Jeff and I re-recorded some V.O. for the animatic last week, we're doing some more week after next with a very prominent movie star," he continued. "We know we've got a really good shot here and we wanna put our best foot forward."