What Happened To David Fincher’s The Goon Adaptation?
Back in 2012, David Fincher gave real hope about adapting Eric Powell’s camp-filled, zombie-noir comic book The Goon. He’d been talking about it since at least 2008. We’d get occasional news on the animated feature, but after a time, the project appeared dead.
Much like the slack jaws that roam Powell’s panels, however, this particular dead thing seemed to keep moving, twitching, and flopping around, refusing to die completely.
Then David Fincher and the folks at Blur Studio turned to Kickstarter in hopes of financing The Goon.
You can see the original The Goon funding video the group posted. It really gives fans the sense that this thing would be coming sooner than later.
And this Kickstarter campaign gave fans even more hope for David Fincher’s The Goon adaptation. Overall, they raised more than $440,000 dollars, well in advance of the timeline needed to secure the funding. But that was so long ago and clearly, as of this writing, David Fincher hadn’t made the movie.
It looks like, at least from Fincher, the adaptation isn’t going to happen. Skip ahead five years to 2017 and the Fincher led group still was holding on to the idea of The Goon coming to the big screen. There was an announcement from 20th Century Fox that they were on board for the flick.
But, as happened with other titles from that studio, The Goon was scrapped when Disney took over Fox. What a total bummer. It’s not totally clear what happened to the money originally raised from the Kickstarter campaign, though one has to assume it was refunded to the backers especially considering David Fincher no longer appears attached to the adaptation.
Weirdly, Blur Studios seemed to have updated The Goon Kickstarter campaign in 2022 giving the sense that maybe they were still trying to get it to happen. Or worse, still maybe hold on to the funds in some way.
Tim Miller is leading Blur Studios and it seemed like they were still bringing The Goon to life. That was reported by Deadline and with it came the word that Netflix was the streamer. Seemed like a match made in comic heaven to bring this to life. But even word on that front has been relatively quiet ever since.
If you’re not familiar with The Goon, you should be. Straight up, it’s one of the best comics out there in recent memory. Powell’s funny book even won an Eisner Award. A manic stew of horror, noir, and slapstick, where else are you going to find zombies, flesh-eating hobos, giant mechanical monsters, mad scientists, and a crime boss that is more Robin Hood than Al Capone?
Throw in a diminutive, foul-mouthed sidekick, a zombie priest, and Peaches Valentine (this is better left for you to discover on your own), and you have the makings of a damn fine time.
Amidst all of the bloodshed, mayhem, and general chaos, Powell manages to insert a shocking emotional center. It sneaks up on you. One moment you’re reading about a many-tentacled creature devouring a car, the next you’re invested in these characters and their stories.
A beautiful sadness, a sense of desperation, and authentic humanity infuses the stories. Not bad for a comic that prominently features a poo-flinging simpleton.
Back in 2012, io9 sat down with Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, the directors of Blur Studio, and got some dirt on The Goon project. They talk about the reactions the team got pitching this to the studios. Here’s what Miller said the Kickstarter money would go to fund:
A story reel for the whole film, and if we got a little more money we could make an animatic that had a little more scope to it. The goal is, you go to the studio and say, ‘Here’s what the project is,’ and they judge it on a few factors that aren’t really representative of what the film is. If we can show them something that represents the entire film, they can hear the jokes, they can see the situations, they can really understand the world in two hours. We’re hoping that will make a difference for them. They go through so many projects they don’t really have the time to dig in and find the true worth. Hopefully we can show them that in the story reel.
Our only hesitation then with this whole shebang was that the film was intended to be PG-13. The Goon is raunchy, profane, and ultraviolent. But hell, we’d rather see a slightly reigned-in version of The Goon than 95% of the nonsense you find in theaters, and if Powell is on board and involved, you can bank on it staying true to the source.
So, is David Fincher still here to make The Goon? That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. But the project might still have life.
