Movies
No Market for ‘Goon ‘Animation?
Two San Diego Comic Cons and a half year later, the David Fincher-producer live-action adaptation of Eric Powell’s The Goon is still stuck in development hell. What’s the hold up? Only about $55 million (doll hairs?) and some confidence in adult animation — two things I don’t expect to fall in their lap any time soon (maybe next decade?) Details inside.
In an interview with Aint it Cool News, producer David Lynch explains: “Animation that isn’t singing furry animals is hard. Especially something as outré as Eric Powell. And it’s his script! (laughs) It’s main-lined Eric Powell. We kind of went out with it at the end of the year and I don’t know that a lot of people were paying attention, but hopefully someone will step in and want to (pick it up).
“I gotta hope there are more avenues for animation than… I certainly wouldn’t call The Goon ‘adult animation.’ I think that ends up starting to sound like Fritz the Cat and that’s not what it is. It’s more like ‘teen animation.’ And it’s funny!
“Hopefully this will be the year that people go, ‘Wait a minute! We don’t all have to be trying to imitate Pixar!'””
He also adds the budget is approximately $55 million. Yikes. That’s kind of steep considering the comic isn’t all that great (in my opinion).
“The Goon” is a comic book series created by Eric Powell in 1999. The story is about the adventures of the Goon, a muscle-bound brawler who claims to be the primary enforcer for the feared mobster Labrazio. The Goon (and his sidekick Franky) often get tied up in other machinations, often in relation to the evil zombie gangs under the command of the Nameless Zombie Priest.
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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