'The Goon' Update: 'Deadpool' Might Help This Animated Comic Book Movie Finally Get Made

Almost eight years ago director David Fincher optioned the movie rights to Eric Powell's Dark Horse comic book series The Goon, which started back in 1999. Over the years, Blur's animated project has struggled to acquire financing. Back in 2013, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Powell said the comic book adaptation was still moving forward. The few hundred ground went towards paying for a feature-length story reel, which was meant to attract financiers. Since then, we've heard very little.

The Goon has been in development long enough that some may have forgotten that Deadpool director, Tim Miller, is co-directing the film. Well, Miller finally has an update on The Goon development.

Part of the reason why The Goon has had a tough time getting made is because it's a PG-13 animated film aimed more towards adults. Some financiers and studios, of course, consider that risky. After the success of Deadpool, though, perhaps Miller's name alone could give the project a much-needed boost.

Collider recently spoke with the co-director, and they asked him for an update on the project. Here's what he had to say:

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

Post-Deadpool, Miller confirms The Goon has started to gain more traction. He says there has been "a number of calls now," and then he recounted the experience of pitching the project to studios with co-director Jeff Fowler and the rest of the team:

Before we did our Kickstarter, we did a whole round with the studios, so we went down, Jeff and me, sometimes Fincher, sometimes Josh Donnen, and we went to all the studios and did our pitch for The Goon. We had a really beautiful pitch, we had a test piece, we had our book, we had all this stuff and at that time it was a $50 million project and we couldn't get anybody to bite. Everybody loved it, but nobody would do it. So we went back and reworked the price a little bit and decided we were gonna take it out again, and right before we did that this demand to do a Kickstarter came up and then we said, 'Okay fuck it, we'll wait, we'll do the Kickstarter, and then we can literally show executives the whole film. Here's the film, you don't have to listen to me tell you what it's going to be, you can see what it's going to be.' And that's what we did.

All involved are still working hard to get this movie made. In fact, just last week Miller and Fowler re-recorded some voice-over work for the 85-minute-long animatic the Kickstarter campaign funded.

The Goon is still set to star Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti, but Miller added they're recording next week with a "very prominent movie star." You can head over to Collider for more details, but the Deadpool director sounded more hopeful than ever about the project.

Anyone out there still eagerly anticipated The Goon?