Movies
Director Named for ‘Monster Squad’, Not the Remake…
With McG exiting the project, Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo) is now tapped to get behind the camera for Monster Squad, formerly known as Nightcrawlers, Warner Bros.’ long-gestating supernatural action comedy.
The studio picked up “Nightcrawlers” as a spec by Brian Lynch in 2000. The project went through numerous writers, including Michael Arndt and Audrey Wells, as Warners sought to find a balance of laughs and chills.
The project’s title was changed to “Monster Squad,” though it is not a remake of the 1987 Warners movie written by Shane Black.
The new “Squad” centers on a neurotic father who must turn to a childhood tormentor to face his lifelong fear of the dark and the monsters who have haunted him.
Chris Bender, J.C. Spink, Jonathan Shestack and Donald De Line are producing. Charlie Gogolak is co-producing.
Jessica Goodman is overseeing for the studio.
Mitchell, repped by CAA, is in postproduction on “Shrek Forever After,” the fourth film in the franchise. He also directed Disney’s “Sky High” and DreamWorks’ “Surviving Christmas.”
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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