The long-stalled animated adaptation of Eric Powell‘s Dark Horse comic book series The Goon is entering a “new round of development,” says an official Kickstarter backing the project.
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Posted by Blur Studio, the visual effects and 3D animation company co-founded by Deadpool director Tim Miller, the Kickstarter post credits backers who have pledged more than $441,000 to resurrect The Goon at now Disney-owned 20th Century Fox, where the project is “officially in development.”
The contributions allowed Blur to “finish a full storyboard animatic of the film, complete with amazing voice acting, sound design, and music,” a template that “sold the producers and studio on the potential of The Goon,” the update reads.
Joining Powell and David Fincher (director, Fight Club, Gone Girl) as producers are The Chernin Group, who backed Fox’s revamped Planet of the Apes trilogy, Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion, the Hugh Jackman-led Greatest Showman, Jennifer Lawrence starrer Red Sparrow, and J.R.R. Tolkien biographical drama Tolkien.
The supernatural-tinged crime-slash-horror comic follows the titular mob enforcer and psychopathic sidekick Franky, who encounter everything from zombies and mutants to ghouls, aliens, skunk-apes, and gang leaders.
A film was first entered into development in the summer of 2008, with Blur and Fincher announced as producers on the Powell-penned project. Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption, SpongeBob SquarePants) was announced as the voice of the Goon with Paul Giamatti (Sideways, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) announced as Franky.
Blur launched the crowdfunding effort and its goal of $400,000 in late 2012. In 2017, when appearing on Comic Book Shopping, Miller called Powell’s script “f—king great.”
“Normally in these things in Hollywood, the creators are often pushed aside. We didn’t want to do that. We brought Eric right in, and Eric wrote the script, and it’s great. It’s just a hard one, because it’s not Disney, it’s not G-rated. So it took a while,” Miller said, promising the movie “will happen” and the creative team has “never given up.”
